D&C Days: Building Climate Resilience Together

Race for Resilience along shared Marrakech Partnership pathways

Event Programme

This dialogue will focus on the need for ambitious actions for building climate resilience, driven by the MPGCA pathways, and to identify what can be done in the run-up to COP26 and beyond. To do so, solutions must be co-created. If we are to leave no one behind in efforts to build a climate resilient and just world, we must listen to local voices, including women, youth and marginalized groups and indigenous people, and give them the agency and legitimacy to design, implement and own resilient pathways that deliver transformative and sustainable impacts. It also means the need for rooting  the MPGCA global pathways in local, national and regional priorities. This is also building on the Development and Climate Days approach to bring community perspectives to the forefront of climate discourse and action

Building on the multi-stakeholder partnership for Global Climate Action and during Race to Zero Dialogues, the High Level Champions have discussed plans for a Race for Resilience campaign, as a complementary sister to Race to Zero. This session is held with the aim to further support the planned Race for Resilience and  to collect further reflections from the broader audience in line with the recently updated MPGCA Adaptation and Resilience pathway which supports the collective vision:

By 2050 we all live in a 1.5 degree warmer world where all regions, countries, cities, businesses communities and individuals THRIVE in the face of multiple risks, uncertainty and threats posed by climate change.

This vision of climate resilience is to be achieved through three interdependent outcomes:

1. Resilient People and Livelihoods Where we live in a world with people who are most vulnerable to climate risks, especially those living in Least Developing Countries (LDC) and in Small Island Developing States (SIDS), are resilient, prosper and thrive.

2. Resilient Businesses and Economies Where climate risks are fully understood by all businesses, investors and society. This includes access to climate risk insurance for all enterprises, and where trillions of future investments are climate risk-informed, and deliver social, environmental and economic impacts internationally/across nation states.

3. Resilient Environmental Systems Where working with nature, with its mosaic of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, is the first line of defence against climate risks of extreme events and disasters, and long term changes in climate. 

This vision puts a focus on people as agents of changes to act now, and tomorrow, to transform systems for an equitable low carbon, resilient and sustainable future. This will involve everyone – especially women, youth, Indigenous people and those living with disabilities. It means helping shape COVID recovery investments to build a low carbon and resilient future.

Objectives

  1. To reflect on the outcomes of the Race to Zero Resilience focused dialogues and on the challenges and opportunities of advancing climate risk management actions which are driven by local actors.
  2. To highlight how the MPGCA Adaptation and Resilience pathway can help to shape coherent and convergent  climate actions of non-state actors across and within sectors to help them deliver ambitious outcomes at COP26 and beyond.
  3. To collect ideas and build support for a planned Race for Resilience campaign to be led by the High Level Champions.

Speakers

  • Nigel Topping, UK High Level Champion, COP 26
  • Sheela Patel, Founder and Director of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centre (SPARC) and Global Commission on Adaptation (GCA) Comissioner
  • Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Community leader, AFPAT, and Senior Indigenous Fellow for Conservation International
  • Sylvie Wabbes, Agronomist, Resilience Advisor, UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
  • David Howlett, Head of Policy at GRP and Advisor to the High Level Champions on Adaptation and Resilience
  • Moderator: Tessa Kelly, Climate Change Coordinator, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent

Context and Organisers

This session is part of the Development & Climate (D&C) Days event – traditionally held each year in the middle weekend of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In 2020, the 18th Development & Climate Days will take place online on 2 and 3 December as part of the Understanding Risk Forum 2020. To attend the event, register for the UR2020 Forum, and add this event to your agenda.

The session is co-organized by Global Resilience Partnership (GRP), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), A2R Initiative, with support of the High Level Champions.