Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) organised on 26th -29th September 2009 a workshop on the economics of climate change adaptation in Africa.  The “AdaptCost” workshop, which took place in the UNEP Gigiri premises in Nairobi (Kenya), brought together a group of African experts along with representatives of international organisations working in the field of climate change adaptation. The workshop provided a fertile ground for experience sharing and allowed participants to take stock of recent developments in the economics of adaptation.

Paul Watkiss and Tom Downing of SEI led the workshop with the support of experts from IIED , UNEP , DFID , OSS, WWF and CGIAR (among others). The four-day programme included case studies, review of existing methodologies and discussions on the economics of climate change. Dorothy Amwata and Jihed Ghannem of OSS provided insights on community-based adaptation in Africa’s drylands with concrete examples from the circum-Saharan region.  Ms. Amwata also made a presentation on the UNDP’s Investment & Financial Flows methodology that is being rolled out, with the support of OSS, in Niger and Algeria.

The salient points raised and the main conclusions reached at the AdapatCost workshop have been captured in a briefing note which will be published shortly on the SEI WeAdapt collaborative platform.

The cost of adaptation is defined in the IPCC Third Assessment Report as “the cost of planning, preparing for, facilitating and implementing adaptation measures, including transition costs”. Getting to grips with the economics of adaptation is a complex exercise which has ramifications that go beyond the technical and scientific domain. Currently, the amount of financial resources needed for adaptation in Africa is one of the most important and hotly debated issues at the international climate negotiations.

An international agreement  on the transfer of the required financial resources from the industrialised countries to the developing world—including African nations— should be sealed at the forthcoming UN conference on climate change—COP 15— which will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009, if Africa is to address the climate challenge adequately. Ideally, this agreement would be part of a comprehensive climate deal which would fill in the vacuum that the Kyoto Protocol would leave when it expires in 2012.

Developing effective methodologies to assess the cost of adaptation would help African negotiators put forward a strong case at climate negotiations. Robust methodological tools would also help decision-makers at the local and national level to better plan and deliver adaptation measures in an efficient and effective way.