By Ryan Laddey | Thu., October 28, 3:11 PM | Comments ( 0 )
Children play in the Makoko fishing community in Lagos on November 21, 2009. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
By the year 2050, the world's population will have grown by 50 percent, mostly concentrated in urban areas. By that same year, we will also need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent in order to keep climate change in check.
"I call this the 50-50-50 challenge," says Cynthia Scharf, representative of the UN Secretary General's Global Sustainability Panel and Climate Change Support Team.
Scharf was one of several high profile panelists who made opening statements at a conference this month on Population Dynamics and Climate Change II: Building for Adaptation, convened by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and El Colegio de Mexico's Center for Demographic, Urban and Environment Studies (CEDUA) in Mexico City.
The concept of population dynamics goes beyond population size and growth rate. Populationrelated information includes fertility rates, migration patterns, spatial distribution, age structure, household size and composition, race and ethnicity, and gender.
Understanding population dynamics can provide a more detailed population picture, since many communities and constituents are not homogenous, particularly when it comes to vulnerability to climate change.
A pre-meeting framework paper entitled, "Populating Adaptation: Incorporating Demographic Dynamics in Climate Change Adaptation Policy and Practice," (by Daniel Schensul, UNFPA and David Dodman, IIED) makes the case that "without better
consideration of the limitations of current understandings of vulnerability and adaptation, and the incorporation of an understanding of population dynamics in addressing these
limitations, adaptation policies and programmes will increasingly fall short of their intended
outcomes."
This point is particularly relevant to the Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP), a flagship programme of the United National Development Programme, with funding from Japan.
The AAP supports 20 countries in Africa in the development of their capability to design and implement holistic climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction programmes that are aligned with national development priorities.
Understanding vulnerability of national populations, and the potential shifts in future populations, is essential for developing targeted policies and capacities to develop resilience.
"Population dynamics is definitively an important aspect decision makers in Africa need to take into account in order to make informed decisions in relation to climate changes," says Jose Levy, an AAP knowledge management specialist. "However, translation of these needs into concrete actions still needs to be organized," he said.
In outlining the case for the importance of population dynamics in climate change adaptation, the framework paper presents three arguments. First, population projections can
provide reliable scenarios with regards to the size and composition of the population in the future, with important implications for climate policy.
Second, population issues are closely linked to economic and social development, affecting formal and informal economic development, access to social safety nets and services, needs in education, dependency ratios and other key components of development which all provide indirect opportunities for adaptation.
Third, some population dynamics provide a direct foundation for adaptation actions on issues such as migration and gender.
According to the framework paper, "Incorporating population dynamics into adaptation can help in understanding who is most vulnerable, why, and how to target policies to decrease that vulnerability."
For more information on the Africa Adaptation Programme, please contact Mihoko Kumamoto (Mihoko.kumamoto@undp.org) at the United Nations Development Programme in New York or Ian Rector (ian.rector@undp.org) in Dakar, or visit www.undpadaptation.org/africaprogramme
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