Speaking Water to Power: An Address to Ministers in Advance of COP15
31/08/09 20:38
Does the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change help anyone with
adaptation practice on the ground now? Can we
improve international adaptation policy?
Here, I was
asked to speak by the Stockholm International Water
Institute on behalf of the CSO/NGO
community to a group of minister/cabinent-level
officials involved with water and development
from six different countries. The "high-level
panel" occurred in late August 2009 during World
Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden. By way of
backstory, I was pretty angry by the time I got
to talk. Most of the ministers had gone way over
their allotted 5 minutes, and it was clear they
weren't very interested in listening to me
anyway. I felt a bit of passion by the time the
discussion came around to me. Their statements
were deeply theoretical -- lacking in people and
places, removed from practical issues. They were
cold. I felt hot. 7.5 min. Below is the written text of
my presentation.
WWF Statement to the
High-level Ministerial Panel
John H. Matthews • john.matthews@wwfus.org
World Water Week, Stockholm, Sweden
20 August 2009
My position at WWF places me between the climate change and water communities, which is often an uncomfortable position. I think many of you are in the same place.
Two weeks ago in South America, I sat in a high-level forum such as this with representatives of a number of Brazilian ministries, multi-lateral groups such as the World Bank, corporations, and non-governmental organizations. After a day and a half, however, two women from the upper Amazon came to talk to us about their experiences with climate-altered flood regimes, the effects this has had on their fishing and agriculture, and the strange responses of species and ecosystems to an increasingly unfamiliar world. They have developed many innovative local adaptation techniques and strategies, and they organized a network of communities to share these lessons more broadly. One of the women, asked if the central government had a useful role for them, said, Yes, but they must also learn from us. We are living adaptation. The minister was silent, his scientists and engineers unfocused from practice, unconcerned with bottom-up and lateral approaches to adaptation.
Currently, climate adaptation expertise exists as a scattered constellation of individuals within larger communities of practice. Our challenge now is how to consolidate those lessons rapidly without exacerbating other issues.
Speaking on behalf of a range of organizations that have identified climate change adaptation as the work of humans for generations to come and that have been struggling — and sometimes succeeding — with policies and projects at all spatial scales, I have come here to say that the UNFCCC and NAPA processes are not in the mainstream of adaptation practice. Indeed, the UNFCCC currently risks irrelevance as a source of guidance, influence, and utility. To paraphrase Yeats, the center is not holding, even as a consensus emerges in the NGO, civil society, and resource management communities that climate adaptation for humans must be grounded in the climate-sustainable management of freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems.
Yes, climate mitigation is critical to slow the rate of climate change, and we need a robust new international framework for reducing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions that includes the United States.
Yes, it is critical that we develop an adaptation fund that can transfer sufficient resources from the developed world to the vulnerable communities of the world, and these transfers must begin quickly.
But as an issue, adaptation finance is a leaf that has become strangely disconnected from the tree of adaptation practice and policy. We fear that the limited definition of adaptation in UNFCCC processes will fall to the ground, discarded by the people who need sound advice and standards on managing shifting ecosystems and ecosystem services. The Danish government’s sponsorship of the Nairobi Statement on Land and Water Management for Adaptation shows the way we must be moving at international and multilateral levels. This April 2009 statement values sustainable development; the resilience of ecosystems, livelihoods, and economies; good governance and implementation; information sharing, and a far more holistic view of economics and finance that begins to view all development aid as a tool for ecosystem-based adaptation.
The NGO and civil society community firmly believe in the importance of water as a unifying theme that can inspire and motivate the community of nations to move quickly to implement climate-resilient policy and land and water management.
I applaud the efforts of the Global Public Policy Network on Water Management to take these issues into the climate change negotiations and get them onto the agenda for COP15. WWF considers GPPN to be a key partner in this process. This positive initiative has been building relationships with negotiators to increase understanding about ecosystem-based adaptation generally among Copenhagen negotiators as well as of building broad commitment for holistic adaptation policies at the highest political levels. We need to send a strong message to negotiators that without a focus on land and water management in relation to adaptation, the resulting mechanisms from COP15 may not be useful to the water community, or to those societies, species, and ecosystems that are so exposed to negative impacts from climate change.
While the international climate change community needs to listen to the water community, WWF also believes that the water community must adjust our language and engagement with policymakers so that they understand that we are no simply a sector. Water is what we are made of. Water crosses political, social, even gender divides. Water links ecosystems to humans, and humans have been managing those ecosystems in some cases for many millennia. And while all of us in the water community know that there are many challenges to managing water beyond climate change, we have also come to understand three key concepts:
First, in many cases, our political and regulatory institutions are interacting synergistically with climate change to exacerbate existing development and conservation problems. The current term of art is that we have engineered our policies and institutions under an assumption of climate stationarity, rather than facilitating dynamic and flexible responses to shifting conditions. Sometimes, hydrology is less of a threat than ideology.
Second, decisions about water infrastructure that we will live with for decades are being made now. Thus, sound and holistic adaptation policy must be developed now.
Third, for the most part, we already know how to manage water wisely and in situations with high and intermediate uncertainty. Implementing current wise-use practices will go far towards building resilience as we develop capacity for newly emerging tools.
We in the water community understand these issues implicitly, even passionately. But we have not communicated them very well. WWF thus also challenges the broader water community: speak to the negotiators. Learn their language so that we move between these worlds more effectively.
We need to Copenhagen to hear Stockholm, a bridge crossing through the water between us. The NGO community stands ready to help.
John H. Matthews • john.matthews@wwfus.org
World Water Week, Stockholm, Sweden
20 August 2009
My position at WWF places me between the climate change and water communities, which is often an uncomfortable position. I think many of you are in the same place.
Two weeks ago in South America, I sat in a high-level forum such as this with representatives of a number of Brazilian ministries, multi-lateral groups such as the World Bank, corporations, and non-governmental organizations. After a day and a half, however, two women from the upper Amazon came to talk to us about their experiences with climate-altered flood regimes, the effects this has had on their fishing and agriculture, and the strange responses of species and ecosystems to an increasingly unfamiliar world. They have developed many innovative local adaptation techniques and strategies, and they organized a network of communities to share these lessons more broadly. One of the women, asked if the central government had a useful role for them, said, Yes, but they must also learn from us. We are living adaptation. The minister was silent, his scientists and engineers unfocused from practice, unconcerned with bottom-up and lateral approaches to adaptation.
Currently, climate adaptation expertise exists as a scattered constellation of individuals within larger communities of practice. Our challenge now is how to consolidate those lessons rapidly without exacerbating other issues.
Speaking on behalf of a range of organizations that have identified climate change adaptation as the work of humans for generations to come and that have been struggling — and sometimes succeeding — with policies and projects at all spatial scales, I have come here to say that the UNFCCC and NAPA processes are not in the mainstream of adaptation practice. Indeed, the UNFCCC currently risks irrelevance as a source of guidance, influence, and utility. To paraphrase Yeats, the center is not holding, even as a consensus emerges in the NGO, civil society, and resource management communities that climate adaptation for humans must be grounded in the climate-sustainable management of freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems.
Yes, climate mitigation is critical to slow the rate of climate change, and we need a robust new international framework for reducing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions that includes the United States.
Yes, it is critical that we develop an adaptation fund that can transfer sufficient resources from the developed world to the vulnerable communities of the world, and these transfers must begin quickly.
But as an issue, adaptation finance is a leaf that has become strangely disconnected from the tree of adaptation practice and policy. We fear that the limited definition of adaptation in UNFCCC processes will fall to the ground, discarded by the people who need sound advice and standards on managing shifting ecosystems and ecosystem services. The Danish government’s sponsorship of the Nairobi Statement on Land and Water Management for Adaptation shows the way we must be moving at international and multilateral levels. This April 2009 statement values sustainable development; the resilience of ecosystems, livelihoods, and economies; good governance and implementation; information sharing, and a far more holistic view of economics and finance that begins to view all development aid as a tool for ecosystem-based adaptation.
The NGO and civil society community firmly believe in the importance of water as a unifying theme that can inspire and motivate the community of nations to move quickly to implement climate-resilient policy and land and water management.
I applaud the efforts of the Global Public Policy Network on Water Management to take these issues into the climate change negotiations and get them onto the agenda for COP15. WWF considers GPPN to be a key partner in this process. This positive initiative has been building relationships with negotiators to increase understanding about ecosystem-based adaptation generally among Copenhagen negotiators as well as of building broad commitment for holistic adaptation policies at the highest political levels. We need to send a strong message to negotiators that without a focus on land and water management in relation to adaptation, the resulting mechanisms from COP15 may not be useful to the water community, or to those societies, species, and ecosystems that are so exposed to negative impacts from climate change.
While the international climate change community needs to listen to the water community, WWF also believes that the water community must adjust our language and engagement with policymakers so that they understand that we are no simply a sector. Water is what we are made of. Water crosses political, social, even gender divides. Water links ecosystems to humans, and humans have been managing those ecosystems in some cases for many millennia. And while all of us in the water community know that there are many challenges to managing water beyond climate change, we have also come to understand three key concepts:
First, in many cases, our political and regulatory institutions are interacting synergistically with climate change to exacerbate existing development and conservation problems. The current term of art is that we have engineered our policies and institutions under an assumption of climate stationarity, rather than facilitating dynamic and flexible responses to shifting conditions. Sometimes, hydrology is less of a threat than ideology.
Second, decisions about water infrastructure that we will live with for decades are being made now. Thus, sound and holistic adaptation policy must be developed now.
Third, for the most part, we already know how to manage water wisely and in situations with high and intermediate uncertainty. Implementing current wise-use practices will go far towards building resilience as we develop capacity for newly emerging tools.
We in the water community understand these issues implicitly, even passionately. But we have not communicated them very well. WWF thus also challenges the broader water community: speak to the negotiators. Learn their language so that we move between these worlds more effectively.
We need to Copenhagen to hear Stockholm, a bridge crossing through the water between us. The NGO community stands ready to help.
