Policy brief on private adaptation in semi-arid lands: Supporting private adaptation to climate change in semi-arid lands in developing countries (produced by PRISE project)

19 June 2018

Supporting private adaptation and climate-resilient development in semi-arid lands is fundamental to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development pledge to ‘leave no one behind’ and to the goal under the Paris Agreement of taking into account the urgent and immediate needs of those that are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

This policy brief draws on five years of research on supporting adaptation and climate resilient development in the semi-arid lands of Senegal, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan under the Pathways to Resilience in Semi-Arid Economies (PRISE, http://prise.odi.org/) project (part of the CARIAA programme, https://cariaa.net/).

It highlights the important role for national governments, in collaboration with their development partners, to support adaptation and climate-resilient development among private actors in the semi-arid lands of developing countries. It also highlights opportunities for public adaptation investments and the development of a supportive institutional enabling environment to upscale more inclusive adaptation and climate-resilient development.

Especially, it argues that public policies, as well as climate and business development funds, need to account for the fact that the private sector in semi-arid lands is often informal, that people are mobile, and that they often move in and out of different economic activities.

This policy brief will be presented at the upcoming Adaptation Futures conference in a session on Thursday 21 June at 2.15pm (session 61, room 1.44).

The policy brief can be accessed here.

Author: Kate Elizabeth Gannon, Florence Crick, Estelle Rouhaud, Declan Conway and Sam Fankhauser