Assessing the implementation progress of adaptation to climate change

Leiter, Timo L. (2023) Assessing the implementation progress of adaptation to climate change. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

2023 is set to be the warmest year on record. Extreme weather events are getting more severe and more frequent, making adaptation to climate change ever more important. Literature on climate adaptation has strongly increased in quantitative output, but only a fraction of it focuses on actual implementation and its effects. Little empirical evidence is available on whether we are adapting. This knowledge gap has been referred to as a ‘grand challenge’ of adaptation research (Berrang-Ford et al., 2019). To improve our understanding of global progress on adaptation, this thesis includes novel empirical accounts of the United Nations (UN) climate change negotiations through multi-year participant observation, examining the rule-setting process for disclosure of adaptation information and the decisions taken on climate adaptation since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015. This thesis also examines whether countries are tracking the implementation of their National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and to what extent adaptation projects are implemented by the multilateral funds under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), namely the Adaptation Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and the Green Climate Fund. These evidence-based accounts are contrasted to assessments based on countries’ stated intentions which are shown to overestimate progress by up to a factor of four. This thesis also includes contributions to two global environmental assessments, the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Adaptation Gap Report of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Its findings are highly policy relevant including in the context of the Global Goal on Adaptation and its framework. This thesis produced novel findings and generated two new datasets including an inventory of over 100 policy documents in more than ten languages. It makes significant contributions to the ’grand challenge' of better understanding global progress on adaptation.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2023 Timo L. Leiter
Library of Congress subject classification:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences
Sets:	Departments > Geography and Environment
Supervisor:	Conway, Declan and Forsyth, Tim
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4561

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