Integrating cross-cutting considerations into national adaptation planning

Integrating cross-cutting considerations into national adaptation planning 

presents an important challenge for countries

Climate change adaptation refers to measures that reduce climate-related risks and impacts on people, ecosystems, and economies while identifying and seizing opportunities for green growth and a just economic transition. National adaptation plans (NAPs) are often the cornerstone of countries’ efforts to identify their vulnerabilities, set adaptation priorities, mobilise finance for implementation, and track progress. However, incorporating cross-cutting considerations—for example, youth, gender, human mobility, or entrepreneurship—into these plans presents an important challenge.

The adaptation cycle

In broad terms, adaptation planning happens in a process with four overlapping stages. These include the assessment of impacts, vulnerabilities and risks; planning; implementation; and monitoring, evaluation, and learning. This process, also known as adaptation cycle, is meant to be iterative, meaning that countries repeatedly move through these stages as data availability and capacities evolve in a changing landscape of climate risks and impacts.

To better understand the process, it is helpful to unpack the four stages. During the assessment stage, countries generally carry out an analysis of climate hazards, exposure, and vulnerabilities, including their social, economic, and ecological determinants, as well as undertake a mapping of assets and services. The planning stage translates this information into nationally determined priorities, costed options, and timelines, commonly linking them to sectoral plans, such as for agriculture, water, health, tourism, or coastal areas. Moving towards implementation, countries then develop and deliver programmes and projects across sectors and scales in line with relevant standards, safeguards, and stakeholder engagement. Finally, monitoring, evaluation, and learning aim to track outputs and outcomes of the implementation with clear indicators to ensure transparency, capture lessons, and feed into the next iteration of the cycle.

The goals of the NAP process are to reduce vulnerability, build adaptive capacity, and mainstream climate risk management into development planning and budgeting. They also provide an opportunity to contribute to the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) set under the Paris Agreement, which provides a broader framework with seven thematic targets and four dimensional targets, which correspond to the four stages of the adaptation cycle. Under these targets, countries and experts are currently developing a set of indicators, which could allow to align adaptation efforts at the global level and help the world to speak a common language.

Cross-cutting considerations

Much of the above-mentioned planning takes place with a focus on existing sectors and their plans, agencies, and mandates. However, there are also cross-cutting and intersectional issues that span multiple sectors and/or administrative levels at the same time, posing a challenge for a sector-based approach. It is therefore crucial to integrate such considerations across the adaptation cycle and ensure that national adaptation planning can address them in a holistic manner that minimises trade-offs and unlocks synergies.

Gender, for example, is a cross-cutting factor that is of great importance to climate change adaptation. Men and women often experience different risks and barriers to services, finance, land, and information. A gender-responsive NAP can use disaggregated data and involve women’s organisations and female-led enterprises in the process to address these differences and ensure that solutions work for everyone and do not exacerbate existing 

Human mobility is a prime example of a cross-cutting consideration that touches on a variety of sectors at once. Climate-related displacement, seasonal migration, and planned relocation intersect with housing, land, labour, education, infrastructure, health, and social protection, to just name a few. Mobility-aware NAPs should not only map current hotspots and mobility pathways, but also project these into the future to ensure foresight-driven planning and preparation for origin, transit, and destination areas. Adaptation can protect rights for those who move and as well as host communities, enable in-situ adaptation where possible, and try to ensure that human mobility is only used as an adaptative strategy based on informed decision-making, agency, and dignity.

Entrepreneurship and private sector engagement also cut across sectors and can become important engines for green growth and resilience-building if their value propositions—and ideally, business cases—align with national adaptation priorities. Adaptation markets—from climate information services and resilient seeds to cooling, water management, and insurance—depend on local enterprises. NAPs can identify investable pipelines, streamline permitting, support incubators and accelerators, strengthen standards and certifications, and crowd in finance through blended structures to de-risk private investment.

As a final example, access to finance and other means of implementation is a key enabler for all sectors. However, in practice, local governments, civil society, microfinance institutions, MSMEs, and other local actors often face high transaction costs and capacity barriers, leading to their inability to effectively implement adaptation action. Enhancing direct and enhanced direct access, simplified procedures, performance-based tranches, and small-grant facilities can help to bring resources closer to the ground.

Outlook

National adaptation planning provides a bridge between global ambition and local action. A successful adaptation cycle, however, depends on adequate data and information, good governance and coordination, capacity-building, and access to finance and technology. Investment in these areas allows countries to increase adaption ambition while also unlocking co-benefits for multiple sectors at the same time, including through disaggregated, decision-ready data; climate services and risk analytics; inter-ministerial coordination mechanisms; interoperable systems; and greater access to global, regional, and bilateral finance.

Integrating cross-cutting considerations into the adaptation cycle can render adaptation measures more equitable and inclusive, but also more bankable and durable. Mainstreaming gender, youth, and other cross-cutting considerations into national adaptation planning not only helps to reduce losses and avoid negative trade-offs, it also lays a foundation for more coherence, complementarity, and synergies across sectors and administrative levels. 

Youth is another key cross-cutting considerations, as young people are both disproportionately exposed to long-term climate risks and essential partners for innovation. Youth-inclusive processes create roles for youth in assessment, planning, and implementation to make sure that solutions are designed with current and future generations in mind, as well as address the specific challenges faced by youth. Furthermore, climate education, greenskilling, and expanded access to finance for youth-led organisations can help to strengthen the role of youth in adaptation and benefit from their energy and ideas.

(The writer works as Director: Research & Knowledge Management at SLYCAN Trust, a non-profit think tank. His work focuses on climate change, adaptation, resilience, ecosystem conservation, just transition, human mobility, and a range of related issues. He holds a Master’s degree in Education from the University of Cologne, Germany and is a regular contributor to several international and local media outlets.)