‘Maladaptation’ fears might end up blocking climate funds for poor nations

Overly strict definitions of failed climate adaptation can potentially prevent vital projects in developing countries from getting financial support.

Maladaptation has been discussed as part of negotiations on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) at COP29. | Photo Credit: Reuters

Finance is the top agenda at COP29, underway in Baku, Azerbaijan. But does the manner in which the science is framed currently undermine financial flows towards adaptation? “We need to be careful how we talk about maladaptation so that our critical science isn’t the reason why the most marginalised people are left behind,” said Lisa Schipper, lead author of a new paper published in Science on November 8.

Maladaptation has been brought up as part of negotiations on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) at COP29. It was also discussed at the last meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-61), where it became a point of contention in the outline prepared for an upcoming IPCC special report on climate change and cities.

At IPCC-61, held between July and August, developing countries like India, Algeria, and Kenya pushed back on references to these phrases in the outline. Ultimately, the phrase “maladaptation” was replaced with “maladaptive practices”. Developing country parties had raised similar concerns earlier as well, like during COP28 in Dubai. They had sought clarity on the concept and suggested that it could be a barrier to accessing adaptation finance.

Developing countries also raised clarity issues with the term “transformational adaptation” at IPCC-61. The term is defined in AR6 as “adaptation that changes the fundamental attributes of a social-ecological system in anticipation of climate change and its impacts”. However, experts point to issues with such broad framings as well as the fact that the definition is not commonly agreed upon among countries. Additionally, examples of transformational adaptation in AR6 are mostly limited to developed countries.

At IPCC-61, Kenya said concepts like maladaptation and transformational adaptation are contested and they should not be used until indicators and other metrics to define them as part of negotiations on GGA are finalised. At COP29 as well, developing country parties opposed references to “transformational adaptation” with the African group saying the term is a non-starter.

“The scope for transformational adaptation is limited in countries where there are developmental deficits,” said Aditi Mukherji, co-author of the paper published in Science and Climate lead at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). “For me, personally, a world free of poverty and hunger, a world where everyone has access to basic minimum water and energy services… If all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are met in a climate-resilient way, that would be transformational adaptation.” However, such a converged view has not emerged as yet because SDGs and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are two different processes of the UN system.

The discussion and decision at COP29 and IPCC-61 will likely spill over into AR7 and future COPs as well. And it will be up for discussion at the next IPCC session in December.

What is maladaptation?

The 6th assessment report of the IPCC (AR6) defines maladaptation as “actions that may lead to increased risk of adverse climate-related outcomes, including via increased greenhouse gas emissions, increased or shifted vulnerability to climate change, more inequitable outcomes, or diminished welfare, now or in the future. Most often, maladaptation is an unintended consequence.”

As an example, consider embankments built along rivers to contain high river levels during the monsoon. But in many cases, such embankments in floodplains exacerbate floods, rather than manage flood waters. This applies to dams as well where, while the intent may have been to control and manage river flow, the ultimate result could include dispossessing local communities of land and forest resources and also flooding. Other examples include interventions that fail to address the needs of the most marginalised communities. For instance, agriculture-related adaptation interventions for farmers who own land, thereby leaving landless farmers in the same region in worse-off conditions.

The next IPCC cycle i.e. 7th assessment report (AR7) provides an opportunity to understand and incorporate contextual elements that cause maladaptation, Bart van den Hurk, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II on climate adaptation told Frontline. “To consider something as maladaptive requires us to consider the goal of the adaptation project. Context is important in defining if a project is maladaptive. Something can be successful in the short term, but regretful in the longer term and vice versa. That’s why we are looking towards our scoping meeting next month [in December] to explore the various contexts of maladaptation. Our Working Group’s work aims to contribute to the long-term monitoring, evaluation and learning of adaptation practices in hopes to avoid maladaptation.”

However, there are issues with the way maladaptation is defined in AR6. The definition includes a specific reference to cap emissions and therefore limits adaptation options that are necessary to save and improve the lives of those impacted by climate disasters. For instance, building cyclone shelters would lead to more emissions given the usage of cement, as would a lot of other infrastructure-related adaptation measures.

This restriction on emissions was the reason some developing countries at IPCC-61 pointed out that maladaptation, as defined in AR6, was “mitigation-centric”.

Irrigation, which has been the primary means of adapting to climate-related weather variability like heatwaves and deficient rainfall, could also be classified as maladaptation if it relies on diesel-powered water pump sets. Even otherwise, irrigation is often classified as a bad practice in maladaptation literature owing to presumptive assumptions about how reliance on irrigation could play out in the future.

More broadly, experts point out that the other flaw in the definition is the assumption that one could have perfect foresight to predict what can be maladaptive in the medium to long-term.

What does the new paper say?

The authors of the paper published in Science attest to concerns raised by developing countries at IPCC-61. It states that assumptions that an outcome will be maladaptive or unmeasurable lead to “risk-averse decisions that hold back investments” and also that “no human possesses the foresight required for completely avoiding maladaptation… adaptation finance is subject to conditionalities that require recipient countries to overcome enormous barriers simply to access funds.”

“Maladaptation needs to be understood as the worst possible outcome from a badly planned adaptation process—and when it’s really bad, it could mean that opportunities for adaptation in the future are undermined or eradicated,” Schipper said. The view in the paper is that there are constructive ways to progress on adaptation measures that deal directly with improving adaptation, rather than trying to avoid maladaptation which focuses excessively on the negative and creates barriers to both funding for adaptation and for policy progress.

Mukherji said they thought that critical work by adaptation scholars aimed at improving adaptation outcomes for the most vulnerable people was being “misinterpreted through a vested lens” to imply that adaptation might be too risky or too uncertain to fund when the reality is just the opposite. “We need more and better adaptation and more finances to adapt. The ones who need adaptation funding the most have not been the ones who have created the climate crisis. So from a climate justice point of view, adaptation funding that comes without a lot of strings attached is the need of the hour,” she added.Rishika Pardikar is an environment reporter based in Bengaluru who covers science, law, and policy.