Climate Resilient Development Pathways
10.6.1 Climate Resilient Development Pathways in Asia
Climate resilient development pathways (CRDPs) are ‘trajectories that strengthen sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty and reduce inequalities while promoting fair and cross-scalar adaptation to and resilience in a changing climate.
Asian countries are repeatedly identified as the most vulnerable to climatic risks with key sectors such as agriculture, cities and infrastructure, and terrestrial ecosystems expected to see high exposure to multiple hazards.
Owing to rapid development and large populations, Asian countries have large and growing GHG emissions:in 2018, five of the top ten emitters in the world were Asian–
China (1), India (3), Japan (5), the Republic of Korea (8) Indonesia
Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate-Change Adaptation Linkages
There is growing evidence on the interconnectedness of extreme weather, climate change and disaster impacts (Asia, 2017; Reyer,2017). In Asia, climate-related disasters have become more recurrent and destructive in terms of both economic and social impacts.
Projections of increasing frequency, intensity and severity of climate-related disasters call for better integration of CCA and DRR (Sapountzaki, 2018) in policy development to address risks efficiently (Rahman et al., 2018) and to promote sustainable development pathways for reduced vulnerability and increased resilience.
Case studies on climate risk management and integrated CCA and DRR actions highlight some key lessons including: an integrated and transformative approach to CCA, which focuses on long-term changes in addressing climate impacts (Filho et al., 2019); adoption of an adaptive flood risk management framework incorporating both risk observation and public perceptions (Al-Amin et al., 2019); a holistic approach and non-structural and technological measures in flood control management (Chan, 2014); monitoring of changes in urban surface water in relation to changes in seasons, land covers, anthropogenic activities and topographic characteristics for managing watersheds and urban planning.
Food–Water–Energy Nexus
Food, energy, water and land are vital elements for sustainable development as well as enhancing resilience to both climatic and non-climatic shocks. All these resources are highly vulnerable to climate change (Sections 10.3.1, 10.3.4).
Poor people are most affected due to changes in resources availability and accessibility. Food, water and energy security are interconnected (Bizikova et al., 2013; Ringler et al., 2013; Rasul, 2014; Chang et al., 2016; Ringler et al., 2016). Although adapting to climate change is one of the core components of the global, regional, national and subnational agendas, the focus of adaptation action has remained sectoral.
The food–water–energy nexus can be evaluated in the two-way interactions between water–food, water–energy and food–energy (Taniguchi et al., 2017a).
Social Justice and Equity
Social justice focuses on the justice-related implications of social and economic institutions, examined in different ways such as distributional justice (distribution of benefits and burdens across different societal groups), procedural justice (the design of just institutions and processes for decision making), inter-generational justice (duties of justice to future generations) and recognitional justice (recognition of historical inequality) (Thaler et al., 2017).
The global land rush and mainstream climate-change narratives have broadened the ranks of state and social actors concerned about land issues while strengthening those opposed to social-justice- oriented land policies (Borras, 2018).
The five deep social reforms (redistribution, recognition, restitution, regeneration and resistance) of socially just land policy are necessarily intertwined.
But the global land rush amid deepening climate change calls attention to the linkages,
especially between the pursuit of agrarian justice, on the one hand, and climate justice, on the other.
Here, the relationship is not without contradictions and warrants increased attention as both unit of analysis and object of political action.
Understanding and deepening agrarian-justice imperatives in climate politics, and understanding and deepening climate-justice imperatives in agrarian politics, is needed
more than ever in the ongoing pursuit of alternatives.
