Accelerating Adaptation Action: From CAS 2021 to COP26 and Beyond
This session looks back at progress made since the Climate Adaptation Summit (CAS 2021), highlights solutions, and identifies outcomes for how to ensure adaptation contributes to a successful outcome for COP26.
Event description:
As the latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in August confirmed, the impacts of climate change are now affecting every region around the world. While accelerating efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the world must also urgently adapt to the changing climate.
This was why the government of the Netherlands, supported by the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), held the Climate Adaptation Summit (CAS 2021) in January 2021, a dedicated platform of global leaders aimed at firmly placing the world on a pathway to accelerated adaptation and resilience.
At this event taking place as part of New York Climate Week and as a side event of the United Nations General Assembly, organized in coordination with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management of the Netherlands and GCA, progress made since CAS 2021 will be identified, solutions highlighted, and outcomes for how to ensure adaptation contributes to a successful outcome for COP26.
As the only international organization focused solely on adaptation, GCA supported CAS 2021 and is working with the partners involved to take forward the coalitions and commitments launched at the event and mobilizing action ahead of COP26.
In particular, GCA’s Water Adaptation Community launched at the CAS 2021 will have a deep-dive conversation at the event with experts from around the world on how we make our cities and urban spaces more resilient to the impacts of climate change such as flooding. Recent months have seen the devastating impacts of urban flooding around the world, for example in Germany in July this summer, the Storm Idai in the USA and in China – with tragic human casualties and heavy economic losses. What solutions can policymakers introduce to combat this threat, set to increase as climate change intensifies, and how can these be scaled and accelerated at COP26 and beyond?
Speakers:
- Patrick Verkooijen, CEO, Global Center on Adaptation
- Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs of the Netherlands
- Kamal Kishore, Indian Co-Chair of Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) Executive Committee
- Johannes Cullman, Director, Water and Cryosphere, World Meteorological Organization
- Vladimir Arana, Programs Coordinator, International Secretariat for Water
- Kathleen Dominique, Programme Lead Financing Water, OECD
- Hengyi Li, Doctor of World Culture Heritage’ at the Beijing Institute of Water
- Mark Kammerbauer, Nexialist Agency for Research and Communication
- Nupur Prothi Khanna, Cultural Landscape Expert, Board Member, International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)
- Patrick Moriarty, CEO of IRC
- Eden Mati Mwangi, Country Programme Manager in Kenya, Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP)