Outlook on climate change adaptation in the Tropical Andes mountains

Analysis of relevant adaptation policies and frameworks of the major vulnerable sectors

People have adapted to the past climate in the Tropical Andes over millenniums, from the domestication of crops and livestock such as potatoes and alpacas and the acclimatization of the Andean population to high altitudes, to institutional arrangements developed for facing mountain environments and extreme weather events. In the current climate change discourse, however, the necessity of adaptation has only recently gained pre-eminence, and become as widely accepted National adaptation policies and instruments of each country were assessed using the following indicators: • Funding • Adaptation targets • Multisectoral articulation • Implementation tools • Focus on mountain ecosystems and adaptation in particular • Adaptation programmes Each indicatorwas given a numerical score, ranging from (1) Existent and sufficient, (2) Existent but insufficient/planned but not implemented, (3) General mention, (4) Non-existent.

and supported as that of mitigation to greenhouse gas emissions (Agrawala and Fankhauser, 2008). For Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the economic cost of a 2.5°C rise in temperature (most probably around 2050) for the region at between 1.5% and 5% of the region’s present GDP depending on which study is used, although these are conservative estimates which have a high degree of uncertainty (ECLAC, 2015).

The goal of this chapter is to qualitatively assess the adaptation policies or policy instruments of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. 2 We consider policy instruments as strategies, plans and programmes at the national level. The scope of this assessment excludes policies at the local level of government since the aim of the report is to provide recommendations for national and Andean regional policies. The analysis is based on four sources of data: publically available official policy documents, a survey answered by government officials, input provided at a regional stakeholder consultation workshop carried out in September 2015 in Lima, and expert opinion. This chapter is organized into three sections: the first analyses policy instruments for adaptation to climate change at the global and (sub-)regional levels (organizations formed by the tropical Andean countries). The second section focuses on the national level, where both national policy and instruments targeting key sectors affected by climate change are assessed according to a set of indicators (see textbox below). The third section describes the institutional framework of climate change adaptation policies within each country. Adaptation policies tailored specifically to mountain ecosystems are extremely rare in the Andean region. This might be due to policymakers not perceiving mountains as isolated units for policy intervention and not treating them as a “special” type of ecosystem. Moreover, policies address public problems and

How national policies and instruments were assessed in this report

The second analysis focuses on adaptation measures addressing key risks in the following thematic area for each country: • Water resources • Land

• Agriculture • Hydropower • Public health • Forests • Disaster risk management

These sectors are similar to the key sectors evaluated for key vulnerabilities and risks in Chapter 2. Each is assessed below according to the presence or absence of the following: (i) Adaptation goals, (ii) Adaptation targets, (iii) Implementation tools, (iv) Mountain adaptation policies, (v) Regional considerations, (vi) Adaptation actions.

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