Climate change threatens the very basis of sustainable development, with adverse impacts expected on the environment, human health, food security, economic activity, natural resources and physical infrastructure.

While mitigation has traditionally been the pivotal issue – the UNFCCC is primarily focused on reducing emissions – for many climate change experts, adaptation to the effects of climate change is now acknowledged as necessary for responding effectively and equitably to the impacts of both climate change and climate variability.

In recent years, adaptation has become a key focus of the scientific and policymaking communities and is now a major area of discussion in the multilateral climate change process. Adaptation has been implicitly and explicitly linked with development, particularly as the IPCC has underscored that developing countries are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change and lack adaptive capacity. Development processes and trajectories will be affected by the rate of climate change, and this is especially important for developing countries with growing economies. Particular attention will need to be paid to the management of water and other natural resources, agricultural activities, and the sources and generation of energy.

Under the UNFCCC, adaptation appears as a cross-cutting theme. While the first Conference of the Parties (COP 1) in 1995 addressed funding for adaptation, it was not until the adoption of the Marrakesh Accords in 2001 that adaptation began to be more widely seen as a prominent area for action. Following the conclusion of consideration of the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report, COP 9 requested the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) to initiate work on scientific, technical and socioeconomic aspects of, and vulnerability and adaptation to, climate change.

Parties reached a milestone at COP 10 in 2004 with a decision known as the Buenos Aires Programme of Work on Adaptation and Response Measures. COP 10 set up two complimentary tracks for adaptation: the development of a structured five-year programme of work on the scientific, technical and socio-economic aspects of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, which was adopted at COP 11 in 2005; and the improvement of information and methodologies, implementation of concrete adaptation activities, technology transfer and capacity building. At COP 12 parties concluded the initial list of activities to be undertaken under former programme of work and renamed it the “Nairobi Work Programme on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change.”

Parties also made progress on the governing principles of the Adaptation Fund, which was established by the Kyoto Protocol to fund adaptation activities through a two-percent levy on emission reduction projects undertaken under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The Adaptation Fund came into effect on the final day of negotiations at COP14. The Adaptation Fund now has the right to sign contracts and release funds that will allow some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries to get vital adaptation projects underway as soon as possible. However, the most observers assert that the Fund is severely under-funded (Oxfam has estimated that adaptation needs of developing countries will be $50 billion a year by 2015).