Climate Futures Webinar Series: The Future of Adaptation

In this first event in DAI’s Climate Futures Webinar series—The Future of Adaptation—our Global Climate Director Donald Lunan explored practical examples of adaptation emerging from projects around the world.

The webinar explored six areas that need to be addressed for climate adaptation measures to be effective and sustainable: governance; inclusion; integration; climate services; finance; and knowledge and learning. The panelists shared their experience and observations from the field concerning these areas.

Panelists included:

• Nilu Basnyat—Chief of Party of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Paani project in Nepal. Panni focuses on aquatic biodiversity conservation and strengthens community resilience. The project has particularly focused on inclusion, engaging civil society and diverse resource-dependent groups to design and implement climate-smart approaches to water resource management.
• Paul Jeffery—Former Chief of Party of the USAID Climate Change Adaption and Resilience (APIK) project in Indonesia. APIK focused on climate adaptation and disaster resilience and worked closely with all levels of governance in understanding, devising, and enacting solutions.
• Alejandro Solis–ICT Specialist, Center for Digital Acceleration. Solis was involved in the USAID-funded Regional Climate Change Program in Central America and the Dominican Republic, where he helped develop the Coffee Cloud app, a tool that delivers daily and seasonal forecasting information to smallholder coffee farmers.
• Berhanu Assefa–Director of Ethiopia’s Climate Resilient Green Economy Initiative under the Ministry of Agriculture. Berhanu provided insights into some of the challenges and opportunities of integrating adaption action into government processes.

The presentations were followed by a discussion in response to questions posed by the audience on the future of adaptation, allowing the panel to draw on their experience from the field.