Climate funds must help integrate climate into policy

Simon Anderson in SciDev.net: At last year's conference of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), countries decided that "comprehensive, iterative assessments of development needs and climate vulnerabilities" should form the basis for national climate adaptation programmes.

Processes are already underway to achieve this aim. At a workshop in Tanzania last month, policymakers from Bangladesh, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda discussed progress on integrating climate change strategies into their country's development plans.

For example, Kenya's Climate Change Action Plan — validated on 22 November and being presented at the current 18th session of the conference of parties (COP 18) in Doha, Qatar (26 November–7 December) — spans adaptation, finance, institutional arrangements, mitigation, technology, capacity development and knowledge management.

Ethiopia's Climate-Resilient Green Economy strategy supports an array of investments, including electric power generation from renewable sources, scaling up the use of more efficient stoves, and increasing the efficiency of the livestock sector.

Similarly, Ghana and Mozambique have national climate change strategies and the Gambia is integrating climate change responses into its Program for Accelerated Growth and Employment.

The integration of cross-cutting issues into policy and planning has been called 'mainstreaming'. This matters because climate change is a special kind of policy problem — a moving and growing target.