“Urging Canadians to Climate Mainstreaming: Canada’s First National Adaptation Strategy”
Canada has taken a significant step towards addressing the urgent global climate crisis with the release of its first National Adaptation Strategy. The strategy emphasizes the importance of climate mainstreaming, which involves incorporating adaptation considerations into all aspects of decision-making, from health and social issues to infrastructure and economics. This approach is crucial as climate impacts become more severe and frequent, and the costs continue to mount.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also highlights the importance of mainstreaming effective and equitable climate action in its 2023 press release. The IPCC Chair, Hoesung Lee, emphasizes that mainstreaming climate considerations will not only reduce losses and damages for nature and people but also provide wider benefits.
To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, global greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut by 43% from 2019 to 2030. However, at the recent United Nations climate conference (COP28) in Dubai, parties were deemed off track in meeting their Paris Agreement goals. This underscores the urgent need for a rapid and meaningful expansion of climate mainstreaming to address the climate crisis.
Mainstreaming climate considerations ensures that responses to climate change are integrated into all policies and actions, rather than treated as a separate issue. This integration allows for more comprehensive and cost-effective interventions by addressing multiple issues simultaneously. Failure to mainstream climate considerations can lead to maladaptation, where well-intentioned actions inadvertently increase climate impacts.
Despite the importance of climate mainstreaming, progress remains slow and uneven due to institutional resistance to change. Climate action is often seen as the responsibility of a single sector rather than a collective effort, and incremental changes are often favored over transformative ones. To address these challenges, lessons can be learned from gender mainstreaming, which has a longer history of institutional investments dating back to the 1990s.
A new study published in 2024 reviewed the gender and climate mainstreaming efforts of United Nations agencies working in the food and agriculture sector. The study identified key areas where climate mainstreaming fell short compared to gender mainstreaming, including strategic planning, leadership, organizational culture, and accountability. To improve climate mainstreaming, governments, development partners, and industries can take actions such as adopting multiple strategies, building institutional accountability, and adopting a climate justice perspective.
Financing is a key component of climate mainstreaming, as adequate funding is essential for implementing climate adaptation and mitigation measures. The 2015 Paris Agreement requires high-income countries to contribute $100 billion annually, but this goal has not been met, and existing funds are unevenly distributed. Historically disadvantaged countries, which are the least responsible for climate change but the most impacted, struggle to balance development and climate action investments in an unjust international financial system.
In 2022, official development assistance reached US$204 billion, but nearly half of humanitarian requirements remained unmet. Rich countries spent only 0.36% of their total income on aid, falling short of the promised 0.7% back in 1970. With adequate financing and a climate mainstreaming perspective, there is hope for addressing both global development and climate goals in a sustainable and resilient manner.