Preliminary results of Climate Proofing and 'Greening' Reviews

All reports produced can be downloaded here: Climate proofing. Norad has prepared a 'standardized' approach to these reviews and the ToR is included in an annex in all reports.
Norad has prepared a technical paper, attached,  which is an attempt to start to tease out preliminary key conclusions and lessons learned from these reviews as a basis for further developing the approach to the reviews. This paper also summarizes the main results and outcomes of the studies. The key messages are:

• The reviews confirm that there are climate change risks associated with current programs, and there are numerous opportunities and options to be assessed in on-going and new sector support programs. In addition, they show that Norwegian development assistance is already addressing climate change risks and the effects of natural disasters without an explicit focus on climate change.
• Climate change is expected to place considerable additional stress on the biophysical, economic, political and social systems that determine livelihood security in the least developed countries. Accordingly there is a growing need for "anticipatory adaptation", in other words, proactive rather than reactive management of climate change risk.
• Good development practices that aim to reduce the vulnerabilities of the poor are already an important step towards adaptation to climate change. Greening and Climate Proofing has enabled the Norwegian Embassies to focus on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in the dialogue with partners.
• There is a need to ensure that climate change, disaster risk reduction and environmental considerations are included as cross-cutting issues in the design and formulation of new programs or program phases.
• Until appropriate climate change models and downscaling methods are available, it might be useful to focus on managing development activities with flexibility and managing under conditions of environmental uncertainty. For example, consider that urban planning and infrastructure will be around for decades after decisions are made, yet it will be a long time, if ever, before we can localize climate change models for decades into the future. Designing for flexibility and uncertainty in environmental conditions can and should be done so that people can adapt irrespective of what climate change brings.
• Mainstreaming of climate change and disaster risk reduction in national development policies, plans and strategies such as poverty reduction strategies and sector strategies could be achieved by raising issues in relevant policy dialogue processes and by supporting the development of national response frameworks if relevant (e.g. capacity development for climate change focal points, improving NAPAs, etc). Possible entry points for this discussion could be macro-economic impacts of environmental degradation and climate change, adapting to existing climatic variability and natural disasters.
• The overall conclusion is that there is potential to intervene to adapt to climate variability and change and to strengthen the environment dimension in the Norwegian supported programs in most countries. Most of the activities required to respond to climate change are consistent with good development practice, i.e. "no-regrets" actions. Good development assistance is the best way to deliver adaptation to climate change through increasing the resilience and capacity to manage the impacts of a changing climate. Traditional development practice requires adjusting to take account of the new, additional risks created by climate change. Further efforts are required to tackle the impact of climate change in Norwegian development cooperation, in close collaboration with other agencies and organizations and on the basis of national policy responses. Based on the reviews all Embassies have prepared a follow-up plan as part of the annual business planning cycle.
• Finally, it should be noted that the most important lesson related to the reviews is that they are useful tools to raise awareness and increase understanding, both within the Embassies and partners. Through the reviews the Embassies start to engage in a constructive dialogue with partners based on a discussion on practical ways and approaches to strengthen the environmental and climate change dimensions of development cooperation. In the long run the process established will be more important than the document produced.

Norad will further develop the approach to the reviews and in close cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs relevant awareness raising and training activities will be carried out to strengthen climate change capacities and responses and mainstreaming of environment.