Launch Global Centre of Excellence on Climate Adaptation on COP23

On behalf of the GCECA, PBL was actively involved in UN Environment’s global Adaptation Gap Report 2017, as member of the Steering Committee. The Adaptation Gap Report 2017, the third global Adaptation Gap Report by UN Environment, has been prepared in collaboration with the Global Centre of Excellence on Climate Adaptation, and focuses on one of the key questions arising in the wake of the global goal: What are the ways forward to assess progress towards the global goal on adaptation?  Within GCECA, PBL will be involved in the follow-up to this monitoring and evaluation report, and probably will participate in knowledge development on financing mechanisms and ecosystem-based approaches to adaptation.

Climate adaptation: a complex challenge

The global challenges and commitments, as agreed on in the Paris Climate Agreement (2015), the Sustainable Development Goals, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Addis Ababa Agreement, and the New Urban Agenda of 2016, provide a complex setting for sustainable and climate-proof development. This in a dynamic world with ongoing climate change, population growth, economic development and a changing societal and political environment.

How to come to grips with this complex domain of adaptation and how to organise and effectively use information flows, constitute some of the major challenges. Also in the Netherlands, PBL contributes to meeting these challenges as addressed in the Delta Programme and the National Adaptation Strategy.

GCECA is aimed to accelerate climate adaptation by recognising, building and promoting excellence among all relevant stakeholder groups around the world. GCECA focuses its activities on those areas where acceleration is most needed, where action is most urgently required, and where this is complementary to the work of others. It is an independent organisation, working across the global North and South, with offices in the Netherlands.

50 international organisations

GCECA is an initiative by UN Environment, the Government of the Netherlands and Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), and has formed partnerships with over 50 international organisations, NGOs, governments, financial institutions, knowledge institutions and businesses to jointly accelerate climate adaptation.

GCECA is the world’s most comprehensive global and cross-stakeholder partnership on climate adaptation. All partners are committed to actively contribute, and some do so by funding specific activities.