Climate Action

This policy brief reviews trends and impacts of wildfires on sustainable development, in all its environmental, economic and social dimensions. It provides an analysis of the key drivers of wildfires and proposes measures to reduce the risk and impacts of future wildfires.

Climate change is already impacting negatively on the health and well-being of individuals across the globe, and this burden is likely to become more important and debilitating over time. Due to deep-rooted systemic inequalities, the growing negative consequences disproportionately affect diverse women, girls and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. The same structural and cultural factors that render them more vulnerable also limit their meaningful participation in mitigation and adaptation planning and marginalize their needs. This policy brief argues the case that to enable gender-transformative, intersectional and rights-based approaches, climate change, gender and other social determinants of health must therefore be considered and addressed jointly where possible. A systems-based approach can improve the understanding of important synergies and co-benefits, feedback loops, trade-offs and unanticipated consequences that are critical to priority-setting and effective responses. It can also foster critically needed cross-sectoral collaboration among the policymakers and advocates who work on climate, health and gender equality.

Development discourse has long acknowledged the disproportionate impact of climate change and its implications for women and other marginalized social groups and has called for gender-responsive and inclusive climate action in international, national and local arenas. However, some countries are still pursuing development trajectories that fall short on gender sensitivity and social inclusion, worsening the impacts on women and marginalized groups while hindering resilience-building efforts. Given Sri Lanka’s heightened climate vulnerability and the exacerbated climate risks on women and other socially excluded demographics, and responding to the call for action in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, this brief examines the level to which Sri Lanka’s development and climate policies and strategies integrate a gender and social inclusion approach in comparison to regional peers. Drawing on this work, this brief then provides recommendations to improve the climate policy landscape of Sri Lanka, including the gender-responsiveness of such work, to inform the country’s ongoing National Climate Change Policy revisions.

Governments that consider risk in policymaking and successfully integrate risk management into their governance frameworks and development have a better record of DRR and resilience building. Climate change is already changing the frequency and intensity of natural hazards, as well as increasing the vulnerabilities of countries in special situations including Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Ensuring risk-informed governance for climate action requires citizen-centric approach through the whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches including the leverage of government innovation and frontier technologies for DRR and resilience. Emerging trends globally show that there is a stark upsurge in the number of disasters in this century compared to the previous one. Over the past two decades, climate-related disasters have nearly doubled compared to the preceding twenty years, affecting more than 4 billion people.

The twenty-eighth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provides an opportunity to assess progress in decarbonization efforts in the shipping sector and adds further momentum to carbon reduction actions. As noted in this policy brief, taking swift measures to reduce the carbon footprint of this sector is instrumental’, given the economic role of the sector and the potential for the current carbon footprint to grow in tandem with global economic growth and trade expansion.

Risk-informed governance and a strong risk management framework are essential for ensuring disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience in rapidly changing and complex world. Governments and public institutions can use risk informed strategies for efficient decision-making and policy formulation in a world characterized by emerging challenges such as climate change, economic volatility, food insecurity and global health crises. Risk management is a key strategy to implement the principle of sound policy making, one of the 11 principles of effective governance for sustainable development. “Effective risk communication along the risk policy cycle is considered highly relevant for successful risk management, from prevention to response, preparation, review and monitoring of diverse risks.”

The planetary crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, an existential threat calling into question the future of civilization. Unless collective action is taken to halt and reverse the decline of the planet’s ecosystems, the road to 2030 will be defined by accelerating levels of social vulnerability, poverty and crisis. The polycrisis experienced in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region over the past decade is a case in point, providing critical insights on the role of ecological change in the emergence of complex multidimensional crises. This paper explores lessons and insights from a new generation of integrated local solutions that have emerged across the region to manage risks and build resilience and makes the case for a new systems orientation to development paradigms and practice to achieve goals of transformational change. In moving towards 2030, a new paradigm is needed in which development is seen no longer as a linear set of goals and targets but as the emergent property of a complex socioecological system.

In recent years, the Government of Costa Rica has recognized the importance of promoting gender equality and women empowerment in the conservation and sustainable use of forests. Costa Rica recognizes that promoting gender equality implies not only mentioning the issue as a priority or as a principle, but also prioritizing the identification of relevant gender inequalities and proposing concrete actions to address them. This brief examines how the Government of Costa Rica, with support from UNDP, is addressing prevalent gender gaps, empowering women in the environmental sector, and comprehensively integrating gender into environmental policies, governance and finance. This, in turn, has resulted in an innovative and gender-responsive offer of environmental incentives in the country that are scaling up results at an influential level, simultaneously increasing women’s economic empowerment, promoting sustainable use of forests and combating climate change.

The policy brief highlights the essentiality of women in agriculture and their potential role in shifting to sustainable agriculture, increasing food security and increasing agricultural productivity when they have access and ability to adopt innovative agriculture techniques such as climate-smart agriculture practices (CSA). This policy brief identifies key actions that can remove barriers or women in agriculture, including collection of gender disaggregated data for gender-sensitive planning, research analysis, advocacy for equitable access to productive assets, capacity building and awareness raising, and cross-sector collaborations to enable gender-equitable access to infrastructure, financial capital, productive assets and other services.

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is reshaping the global economy, transforming consumption patterns while driving economic growth. The value of the sector rivals that of global trade in goods and services, and keeps expanding. E-commerce platforms help millions of businesses, many of which are small and medium-sized enterprises, sell online, overcoming barriers such as physical market access, infrastructure gaps and social constraints. However, the benefits of e-commerce remain uneven, with most developing countries lagging in the adoption of online shopping. It is also critical to ensure that this global transformation does not compromise environmental sustainability. The environmental impact of e-commerce depends on the type; business-to-consumer e-commerce implies a growing number of smaller packages, deliveries and returns, while business-to-business e-commerce may be more efficient, with bulk orders requiring less packaging and allowing for streamlined delivery. The different stages of the business-to-consumer e-commerce logistics chain for goods (warehousing, packaging, transport, returns) are examined in this policy brief, along with changing consumer behaviour. In addition, the need to rethink these elements is highlighted, to reduce the environmental footprint of e-commerce, while creating a regulatory framework that balances environmental sustainability with economic growth.