25-26 January: Climate Adaptation Summit
The Climate Adaptation Summit - hosted online by the Netherlands on 25 and 26 January 2021 is expected to be joined by many Presidents, Prime Ministers and world leaders for the opening session.
Speakers whose contributions are bound to attract wide attention include -
Han Zheng, Vice Premier of the People’s Republic of China, and Deputy Head of the National Leading Group on Climate Change, Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction; and
John Kerry, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate of the United States of America.
The full programme for the Summit is here
The Climate Adaptation Summit (CAS) 2021 will feature a range of Anchoring Events streamed from around the globe over the course of 24 hours starting 25 January. In chronological order (CET = UTC+1):
The Climate Adaptation Summit will revolve around the commitment of the parties to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (Article 7) to address the need for adaptation to climate change which is already happening, as well as seeking to mitigate and reduce future emissions of greenhouse gases.
The following is an extract from the COP26andbeyond Guide to the Paris Agreement which we published online in 2020 in English, Italian and Spanish , concerning Article 7 –
“While Article 4 is really about “Mitigation”, or the measures that Parties agree to take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this Article is about “Adaptation”, or the steps that Parties need to take to adapt their societies and infrastructure, and to build up their resilience against the effects of climate change that are going to happen anyway.
For example, Malaysia, like other countries, will need to show how much it can do to mitigate climate change and reduce emissions through its Nationally Determined Contributions. But Malaysia will also have to adapt to climate change as it is predicted that it will affect the country, via rising sea levels affecting the coasts; changing weather patterns affecting agriculture, changed patters of disease prevalence in different areas of the country affecting public health.
This is the part of the Paris Agreement where the Parties agree that it is necessary to “Adapt” to climate change. Parties agree to build up their “adaptive capacity, to strengthen resilience and to reduce vulnerability to climate change. ”
As well as working on their national adaptation plans, Parties are urged by this Article to cooperate with each other. “