Impact Explorer Award for Aarti Gupta: Beyond the status quo

Professor Gupta explains: “This grant is for ongoing projects in which you stumble upon unexpected insights that may have important societal implications. In my case, the topic is how to better support appropriate climate actions amongst least developed countries, those most impacted by climate change. First, the background: under the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, countries are required to be transparent about their commitments to take mitigation measures against climate change, including monitoring and reducing emissions. Much hope is pinned on such transparency. However, the group of least developed countries (LDCs), including countries such as Cambodia, Ethiopia, Nepal or Malawi, do not have high emissions. Their domestic climate priorities thus may not focus as much on mitigation, but rather on adapting to climate change, for example, through measures to protect crops from draught or protect cities from flooding.

In our ongoing research, we found that least developed countries do not easily fit into the dominant requirements of international climate reporting. Given their low emissions, they have different domestic priorities compared to industrialized countries and larger emerging economies. The dominant obligation of having to report on mitigation actions under the Paris agreement may generate few benefits for these countries, and may even be burdensome, especially if there is a shift of financial and human resources away from adaptation-related reporting to mitigation. If so, we want to know: how can LDCs operate within this context and realign the (formal) reporting framework to address their own priorities around adapting to climate change? Is there space to do so, both within and outside this set framework? What room is there to reflect and act on this?”

Safe space for out of the box thinking and acting

With this grant, Gupta wants to bring key government representatives and other transparency experts from LDC countries together to create a safe space to reflect on alternative ways of reporting on adaptation or other climate priorities in these countries.: “Is there room to do this within the current transparency requirements, and if not, what is needed? To explore this, we will organize a 3-day interactive workshop with the Ethiopian Environment Agency and ourselves in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Also, in June during the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Bonn, Germany, all LDC countries will be present, which is a marvellous opportunity to engage with them on this topic. Here too, we will organize a workshop to jointly reflect further on this issue.”