Climate Frontline

International concern about climate change is rising rapidly, but international action lags behind. Other reports demonstrate clearly the scale of the problem at the global and regional level. This report is different: it allows the voices of men and women in vulnerable African communities to be heard directly.

In Climate Frontline, they describe, in their own words, how climate change is affecting their lives and how they are adapting to survive. The five development Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) involved in the compilation of this report believe that action to tackle climate change must start by listening to and supporting communities living on the ‘climate frontline'. The accounts presented here clearly demonstrate that:

• climate change is already a reality in vulnerable regions of Africa, and
• communities are doing their best to adapt to their changed environment by building on local knowledge and diversifying their livelihoods.

By sharing the experiences recorded here, we hope that policy-makers, NGOs and frontline communities can learn more about adaptation and begin to work together to transform surviving communities into thriving communities.

However, in order to do this, much more support is needed for adaptation in the form of sufficient, fair and reliable funding support that is spent in a coordinated, responsive and cost-effective way.

This report is published as international climate negotiations gear up for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. Together with thousands of other civil society organisations, we are calling for all countries to agree an ambitious, fair and binding agreement on both mitigation and adaptation.We believe:

1) Adaptation funding must be sufficient, fair and reliable:

• Sufficient - latest estimates are that around $80 billion per annum is needed for adaptation, dwarfing the less-than $1 billion currently available;
• Fair - the costs of adaptation must be borne primarily by those responsible for creating the need, i.e. high-income, high-emission countries;
• Reliable - funding flows must be predictable and long-term, not dependent on the erratic ‘charity' of donors.

2) Adaptation spending must be coordinated, responsive and cost-effective:

• Coordinated - a single adaptation funding mechanism should replace the current proliferation of separate funds;
• Responsive - priority must be given to the worst-affected countries and communities;
• Cost-effective - spending should be channelled via the most cost-efficient routes, including civil society organisations.

At the same time, high-income, high-emission countries must rapidly reduce their own emissions, as well as support investment in low-carbon development paths for low income countries. The costs of mitigation must be borne in proportion to responsibility for the production of the greenhouse gas emissions that have contributed to the climate crisis.

November 2009