Adaptation Future 2016 focused on climate change adaptation practices and solutions for people, governments and businesses.

Adaptation Futures 2016 was among the world’s largest ever gatherings focused on climate change adaptation.  It highlighted adaptation practices and solutions for people, governments and businesses. The program addressed all sectors and all parts of the world, bringing together 1,000 scholars, practitioners, policymakers and professionals.

During the conference, WRI led cutting edge discussions and share adaptation-related work from the Climate Resilience Practice, the Water Program and the Finance Center. These teams played key roles in sessions on tracking adaptation success, reducing poverty and inequality, creating green water utilities, increasing community resilience in cities and closing the adaptation finance gap. WRI staff from the US, Brazil and India participated.

Adaptation Futures is the biennial conference of the Global Programme of Research on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation (PROVIA). In 2016, the European Commission and the Government of the Netherlands co-hosted the fourth edition.
 

A full list of WRI's sessions can be found below:

Aqueduct Global Flood Analyzer 2.0 "Tool Shed" session
When: Tuesday, May 10, 16:45-17:15
Where: Town Hall
Who: Rutger Hofste (Presenter)
What: This session will showcase the Aqueduct Global Flood Analyzer, which measures river and coastal flood risk at the country, state and river basin scale. The session will be jointly hosted by The World Resources Institute and the IVM (VU University, Amsterdam). Presenters will share progress on storm surge research, population growth modeling and the development of a global database of existing flood protection standards, a crucial piece of information in understanding flood risks.

 

Joining forces: tackling adaptation, alleviate poverty and inequalities
When: Wednesday, May 11, 13:30-15:15
Where: Town Hall
Who: Heather McGray (Chair)
What: The effects of climate change are increasing and unevenly distributed, hitting poor countries and people disproportionately. Following Paris, billions of dollars will be invested every year in adaptation. From a moral and humanitarian point of view one of the major challenges is investing in adaptation and development while reducing poverty and in-equity. There also proves to be a clear cost of inaction in this respect, urging governmental attention. Which approaches do we need and how can different actors join forces? That is the debate in this round table, enriched with reflections from the World Bank, Bhutan, Ethiopia, OECD and the EU.
View/Download Roundtable Summary Report
View/Download Roundtable Presentations

Green water utilities
When: Wednesday, May 11, 13:30 – 15:50
Where: Leuwen Room II
What: This session presents green utility examples: business cases of water utilities that illustrate the role utilities can play in society to lower their climate footprint and make drinking water systems climate resilient and adaptive to climate change. Through this session we want to present and promote an approach to transform water utilities into "green utilities." A partnership of water utilities, governments, donors and investors – gathered in the green utility network – promote this approach to transform utilities and scale up the green-grey infrastructure investments. A panel composed of utilities, climate experts and financiers will reflect on the opportunities of green utilities and their roles and contribution for scaling up.

Goals, targets and metrics: new ideas for tracking adaptation success in cities, forests, water, finance, and national planning
When: Wednesday, May 11, 15.45–17.30
Who: Heather McGray (Chair), Ayesha Dinshaw (Rapporteur)
Where: Beurs Hall
What: In this panel session, participants working in a variety of sectoral and cross-sectoral contexts will share perspectives on defining and tracking adaptation success. We aim to identify practical options to defining success and tracking progress, given climate uncertainty, long time horizons, and growing interest in transformational change. In order to identify tangible solutions for use by practitioners and policy-makers at national level or across scales (national-to-local), the session seeks to avoid focusing on broad conceptual frameworks, aggregate global indices, or narrow project-specific approaches. Instead we will look across sectors and adaptation planning contexts to find shared themes and promising methods for setting adaptation goals and tracking progress toward them.

The road from Paris: closing the adaptation finance gap in vulnerable developing countries
When: Wednesday, May 11, 15:45-17:30
Who: Athena Ballesteros
Where: Town Hall
What: This round table event will bring together representatives from international financial institutions, developing country governments, and national institutions to discuss the current state of finance for adaptation, and explore some of the possible pathways to increase adaptation finance post-Paris.