Context
Developing countries and emerging economies face a rising need for investments in physical infrastructure to sustainably provide a growing population with clean energy, water and transport. However, climate risks and the costs associated with them are seldom considered in the planning of infrastructure projects. This is why Enhancing Climate Services for Infrastructure Investments (CSI) has the goal of advising authorities and decision-makers in its partner countries in using needs-based climate information and risk assessments (Climate Services) in the planning of investments. Climate Services provide decision makers with climate information ready-to-use for effective climate risk management. This way, climate risks are identified early on and a foundation is built for financially feasible and sustainable adaptation action.
Developing countries and emerging economies are investing billions in durable infrastructure every year. However, they often fail to take account of future climate change in their planning. As a result, new infrastructure projects are being implemented in ignorance of their vulnerability to climate change. This leads to high risks of damage, loss and misguided investment with potentially serious consequences for the economy and society.
A number of countries, including Brazil, Costa Rica and Viet Nam, have already launched efforts to increase the resilience of their infrastructure and have included this as a goal in their climate pledges.
In order to honour their pledges, the partner countries need to improve their capacity considerably at the individual, organisational and societal level. This includes the capacity to establish and apply institutional arrangements and technical processes, enabling them to independently develop climate information, advisory services and products (climate services) that are geared to the requirements of decision-making and planning processes (e.g. climate risk assessments). The partners must be able to access and apply these services effectively when planning infrastructure. However, even where needs-based climate services are already available, they are often only used to a limited extent – if at all – in the relevant decision-making and planning processes. This is because climate-related issues are not taken into account in the planning specifications, especially in infrastructure planning.
A few international initiatives have begun to address this challenge, including the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). Their goal is to offer the countries guidelines on the institutional mainstreaming and practical design of value-added climate data for needs-based climate products. The project transposes the international framework of action of the GFCS to national level in its partner countries. It promotes the country-specific institutional and technical design of structures to enable countries to make better use of climate services and to include them in their infrastructure planning.
Objective
Decision-makers in the three partner countries and the Nile Basin Initiative make greater use of climate services when planning infrastructure investment
Approach
In cooperation with the German National Meteorological Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD), the project is advising the national partners on building human resources, technical and institutional capacity and networks to improve the climate service value chain, from processing climate data to developing user-focused climate products and advisory services for infrastructure planning, like e.g. climate risk assessments. Particular attention is devoted to establishing sustainable cooperation structures between the relevant actors in the value chain, such as those providing and refining climate data, decision-makers, planners and engineers in the infrastructure sector. The project promotes networking between them and is piloting a cooperation network in each country to this end. To test these networks and put them on an institutional footing, the actors go through an iterative process through the project-based establishment of a climate service provider-user interface. During this process, they develop tailor-made climate products to carry out a technical risk analysis of selected infrastructure. The methodology of this analysis is based on the Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee (PIEVC) Protocol provided by Engineers Canada, another project partner. This protocol sets out how objects, their components and operational procedures of specific infrastructure are affected by various climate factors and how to select adaptation measures. Experience with the risk analysis process is used to draw up recommendations for including climate change in the existing country-specific infrastructure planning methods and guidelines.
During the pilot trials of the climate services, the stakeholders are given the opportunity for direct, hands-on learning. This enables them to acquire in-depth know-how on the topic, supplemented by tailored training sessions and train-the-trainer programmes.
In order to roll out tried-and-tested approaches, national dialogue forums are organised on climate services and climate-adapted infrastructure. The results are also fed into the national planning processes on climate policy, which are laid down in the national contributions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The project shares lessons learned from its work through channels such as the website AdaptationCommunity.net.
Results
The CSI project promotes the interface between climate information providers and decision makers. Through pilot studies, the project supports the development of climate products customised to the needs of the infrastructure owners. At the same time, training activities sensitise stakeholders about the importance of using climate information in the various levels of the planning process. All activities are integrated into the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to promote their development and implementation.
In its work, CSI reaches actors from different sectors, disciplines and fields of responsibility, from engineers to climatologists, from the infrastructure planners of sector ministries to those in charge of climate change adaptation in the Ministry of the Environment. Overall, training activities of CSI reached more than 150 people from the infrastructure sector. More than 500 people participating in CSI events were sensitised to the need for climate services as basis for climate-resilient infrastructure. Beyond this, several strategies and regulations for climate-risk-informed infrastructure planning and management are being supported as part of CSI’s activities. Among them is the National Adaptation Policy of Costa Rica and the Climate Service Action Plan of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI).
In essence, CSI follows 4 strategic lines of action:
• Establishing Climate Services as a new public service: CSI supports its partners in creating enabling conditions for a better use and provision of climate services. Among the tools used for this are climate risk assessments for existing and planned (public and private) infrastructure and digital solutions (ClinfoMATE). They are used to kick-start new value chains of providers and users of climate services. These tools are augmented by human capacity development via on-the-job trainings and Training of Trainers along the five pillars of the GFCS. Part of this is the development of technical capacities, like e.g. in the context of a training on data harmonization by DWD for the National Meteorological Institute (IMN) in Costa Rica. On the institutional level CSI furthers structures and abilities for the effective communication and cooperation across disciplinary boundaries as well as new institutional partnerships (e.g. between sector ministries and meteorological services). Based on these new relationships, partners are advised in developing strategies for enhancing climate services. Among these are the Climate Service Action Plan of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) and the consideration of climate services in Costa Rica’s National Adaptation Policy. With the development of the digital solution (ClinfoMATE) the potentials of digitalization for streamlining the co-development of climate services are explored jointly with the partners.
• Climate-resilient transformation of infrastructure investments: CSI links up actors from climate policy, climate science and infrastructure planning and operation via dialogue fora, joint working groups and pilot risk assessments. The pilot sectors energy and marine transport (Brazil), road transport (Costa Rica) water (Nile Basin Initiative) and water and agriculture (Vietnam) build adaptation coalitions with CS providers and Ministries for the Environment to jointly identify entry-points and develop regulations, guidance documents and tools to incorporate climate change considerations into the infrastructure investment cycle. Examples are the cooperation on climate change adaptation with the Ministry for transport, ports and civil aviation (Ministério dos Transportes, Portos e Aviação Civil - MTPA) in Brazil and the working group on developing a presidential decree and methodology for climate-risk-informed infrastructure planning in Costa Rica. A further entry-point is the climate proofing guideline being developed together with the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) that will guide climate-risk-informed planning of transboundary infrastructure projects.
• Climate proofing made to measure: The PIEVC Engineering Vulnerability Assessment Protocol is a bottom-up, participatory risk assessment tool tailored to the needs of the infrastructure sector. CSI advises its partners in using the tool and adapting it to their specific decision-making contexts within the infrastructure investment cycle. While in Costa Rica the tool is used to decide between rebuilding or retrofitting an existing bridge, in Vietnam it is used to inform the design of a sluice gate. The experiences from the pilot applications are taken up by the countries in their efforts to make climate-risk-informed infrastructure planning the new standard. Brazil, for example, will input the results of the risk assessment into the GIS database to inform disaster risk management decisions in the future. Costa Rica, on the other hand, is developing its own official risk assessment protocol based on the PIEVC and intended to become a fixed part of the planning process. Vietnam uses the results of the risk assessment to inform provincial Socio-Economic Development Plans (SEDPs) while the Nile Basin Initiative is making the methodology a core element of its new climate proofing guideline. These institutionalisation processes are supported via human capacity development activities in the context of a specially developed Training of Trainers approach on climate proofing of infrastructure. It is aimed at sustainably enhancing application and implementation capacities. The training has already been successfully implemented in Costa Rica and Vietnam. Beyond that, 57 stakeholders have developed capacities on-the-job in analysing climate risks for infrastructure in the context of four climate risk assessment pilots (Brazil, Costa Rica, Vietnam).
International knowledge management and transfer: Experiences made in the context of CSI were publicly presented and discussed during the Bonn Climate Change Conferences (SBs) and World Climate Conferences (COPs) in Bonn and Katowice jointly with Costa Rica, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) and Vietnam as well as DWD, WMO and WFEO. Initial results of CSI are also introduced into the policy dialogue within and between the CSI partner countries. For this purpose, in January 2019, the second "CSI Global Forum" was held at the invitation of Costa Rica. During the forum, CSI’s partners had the opportunity to exchange and create common perspectives for the future. Beyond this, knowledge products of CSI are developed and uploaded on AdaptationCommunity.net