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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
Analysis of relevant adaptation policies and frameworks
of the major vulnerable sectors
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
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.
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.
How national policies and instruments were assessed in this report