The 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) Climate Summit took place over two weeks from 31 October to 12 November. Thousands of people attended, organisations held hundreds of side of events, and a number of initiatives and plans were announced. But what does it all lead to? At the Global Resilience Partnership, we are taking forward the momentum and collaborations from COP26 into action to build a resilient future.
This COP saw much more attention and funding being driven into resilience and adaptation from governments, the private sector, and communities. We are calling for resilience and adaptation to be equally supported alongside mitigation, and we are using our eight years of experience in resilience to help shape and support new initiatives and activities. Below are the key numbers, announcements, and actions that we as a Partnership were involved with at COP26 and will take forward in the coming months.
Resilience Hub
- With over 154 events from 80 event partners featuring 176 participating organisations, the first ever COP Resilience Hub brought together a community of state and non-state actors in an unprecedented collaboration.
- The hub had close to 10,000 physical visitors and over 7,500 virtual participants joining from all over the world.
- We heard from voices from across the globe, and had virtual hubs in South Asia, Latin America, Africa, South East and East Asia, and the Pacific.
- In a High-level Plenary session at the end of week 2, Nigel Topping, High level Champion for Climate Action at COP26, said, “We’re delighted that the Resilience Hub has been a real success here and we hope that it goes from strength to strength to draw more attention and direct more resources to resilience solutions”.
Innovating for Climate Resilience Fund
- We launched the Innovating for Climate Resilience Fund in partnership with the Global Innovation Fund and the Adaptation Research Alliance. The fund has seed funding from UK’s Foreign Commonwealth, and Development Office.
- Through the fund, we will invest in innovations that aim to support people living on less than $5 per day to build resilience and adaptation to shocks and stresses.
Resilience Knowledge Coalition
- GRP, CDKN and ICCCAD launched the Voices for the Frontline digibook.
- The coalition amplified voices from grassroots leaders from South Asia and Africa who are acting as knowledge catalysts between grassroots communities and best practices to facilitate resilience among the communities at the frontlines of nested challenges like COVID-19 and climate change.
Race to Resilience
- The Resilience Knowledge Coalition was also launched as a Transformation Knowledge Partner to the Race to Resilience at the Resilience Hub.
- The Race to Resilience has set a bold goal of reaching four billion people with resilience and adaptation solutions by 2030. Already R2R partners have made commitment to build the resilience of 2.4 billion people. We are proud that Resilience Knowledge Coalition is part of this solution-oriented network.
- The coalition’s contribution to the Race to Resilience Metrics Framework with knowledge brokering, capacity exchange and the members’ collective expertise on resilience measurements was highlighted at an event by the Race to Resilience High Level Champions team and at the Marrakesh Partnership for Global Climate Action event on Adaptation and Resilience.
The Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA)
- The Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau confirmed a $9m commitment to ORRAA to support the Alliance’s ongoing work in Small Island Developing States and coastal developing countries.
- Google announced a US$2 m commitment on behalf of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to ORRAA for its work with partners to develop an innovative risk assessment tool to help insurers combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
- The UK reaffirmed its investment into ORRAA through the Blue Planet Fund and announced that part of its contribution will be investing into ORRAA’s Ocean Resilience Innovation Challenge (ORIC), which seeks to surface new, locally-led finance products that can be scaled to benefit coastal communities across the world.
- The Swiss Re Foundation announced that it will also be contributing to the Ocean Resilience Innovation Challenge. Together with the UK’s financial contribution, Swiss Re Foundation and UK’s Blue Planet Fund (BPF) will provide over half a million dollars in support to the challenge over the coming two years.
- AXA committed US1.1m in support of ocean risk research as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science.
- The Commonwealth Blue Charter, Asia Development Bank, BNP Paribas, Palladium, Van Oord, and the Insurance Development Forum all announced they are joining ORRAA.
Adaptation Research Alliance
- The UK COP26 Presidency, the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, and partners officially launched the Adaptation Research Alliance (ARA) at COP26. The Adaptation Research Alliance is a global, collaborative effort to increase investment and opportunities for action research to develop and inform effective adaptation solutions.
Locally-led Adaptation Principles
- Danida, Sida, USAID and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced their endorsement of the eight principles for locally-led adaptation at the Resilience Hub. The principles were developed to help ensure that local communities are empowered to lead sustainable and effective adaptation to climate change at the local level.
Development & Climate Days
- This year’s D&C Days was the most inclusive ever and accessible to all through an online platform.
- The D&C Days had a record number of participants – 1,152 people registered.
- GRP co-led Resilience Food and Agriculture stream of D&C Programme and co-created an event What are the critical actions needed to build climate resilient food systems in vulnerable and fragile regions?
Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action (MPCGA)
- This year’s MPGCA Adaptation and Resilience high level event was closely curated together with Race to Resilience High Level Champions team and with 7 sectoral teams under MPGCA.
- This event featured a launched of revised Adaptation and Resilience Pathway (v 2.0) and discussion on how to operationalize the common 9 suite of AR interventions across sectors to build a resilient future.
- The event was highly attended by physical and virtual audiences – being the second most viewed event amid MPGCA action zone events.