“We’re at a point where we’ve run through the theory and have to start doing practical stuff,” said Nick Mabey, the chief executive of E3G (Third Generation Environmentalism), an international non-profit organisation that works on accelerating transitions to sustainable development.
Applying knowledge in real contexts will require everything from finding ways to work with corrupt or exploitative governments, to using game theory to help bureaucrats get hands-on experience in making effective decisions, Mabey and other experts said at a London roundtable meeting on climate security issues.
Measures like moving responsibility for climate adaptation from environment ministries to more powerful finance or economy ministries will also be helpful, they said, as will financial and other incentives for politicians and officials to take action.
...One problem facing governments and other institutions trying to incorporate climate adaptation into their planning is that decisions often need to be made quickly, across departments, and in ways that go against traditional planning.
After Pakistan’s record-breaking 2010 floods destroyed roads, schools and other infrastructure, for instance, officials came under pressure to rebuild facilities fast. As a result, many were reconstructed to existing standards – not to a level that would make them more resilient in the face of worsening floods, droughts and other climate impacts, Mabey said. “The urgency of now meant they rebuilt as things had been. That’s going to happen again and again in a lot of places,” he warned....
A broken bridge in Pakistan, shot by Maria Ly, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
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