Overview

The Global Development Challenge
The International Vision
CIDA's Strategy
Spotlight
Find Out More

Rural communities in China are using solar panels instead of burning coal to generate energy for electrification. In Indonesia, people are replanting to save the peatlands, a key source of carbon storage. In the Caribbean, weather modelling and risk assessments are helping countries cope with rising sea levels and more frequent storms. These initiatives and many more are being supported by CIDA to help its partners reduce emissions, store carbon dioxide, and prepare for and adapt to climate change.

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The Global Development Challenge

Rising sea levels, extreme weather events, shifts in wind and rainfall patterns-the Earth's climate has changed at an unprecedented rate in the last generation. Increased energy use, more industrial pollution, rapid deforestation, and a growth in large farming operations all release large amounts of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. The growing concentration of these gases is increasing the Earth's natural greenhouse effect, which traps heat within the atmosphere and causes the phenomenon known as global warming.

The poor are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change:

• They rely more directly on their immediate natural environment for food, water, and income.
• Deterioration of the natural resource base has an immediate impact on health, food security, safety, and income.
• Women, as the main food producers and water and fuel gatherers, are particularly affected.
• The actions of the poor, who live on the most vulnerable lands-hillsides, floodplains, depleted soils-often contribute to the problem. For example, many have no choice but to practice slash-and-burn agriculture, which clears forests, erodes soils, and increases carbon dioxide emissions that affect the global atmosphere.
• Without the capital or expertise, the poor are unable to manage their own resources or protect themselves from the effects of climate change.

Climate change affects all countries, ranging from the desperately poor to the rapidly emerging economies. However, all need help to better manage their natural resources, use less polluting production techniques, and find cleaner, more efficient sources of energy.

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The International Vision

The international community is tackling climate change through a number of agreements to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs):

• The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was introduced at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It was eventually ratified by more than 100 countries, including Canada.
• The Global Environmental Facility was created to provide funding to implement this convention.
• In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol, which Canada ratified in 2002, provided specific goals for GHG emission reduction. Environmental sustainability, one of the Millennium Development Goals, includes commitments on GHG emission reduction. The international community renewed its commitments to reducing GHGs at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002.

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CIDA's Strategy

Canada has identified advancing environmental sustainability as one of CIDA's five program priorities. Reducing the impact of climate change to protect livelihoods and reduce vulnerability is an area of focus within this priority.

Through the $100 million Canada Climate Change Development Fund (CCCDF), CIDA supports its partner countries' efforts to meet their commitments under the UNFCCC by:

• reducing their greenhouse gas emissions;
• protecting and enhancing vegetation that absorbs carbon dioxide (carbon sinks);
• adapting to climate change with appropriate technology; and
• raising awareness and developing national capacity to address climate change.

The CCCDF has supported 46 initiatives to date, including providing $10 million to the Global Environmental Facility's Least Developed Countries Fund. Some highlights of the Fund include:

• clean energy: two solar energy demonstration sites in Western China are providing clean energy alternatives for rural electrification;
• carbon sinks: peatlands in Indonesia are being restored through a simple, low-technology approach and local communities are replanting these highly effective carbon sinks;
• reduced vulnerability: in the Caribbean, use of weather modelling and hazard risk assessment techniques are helping countries adapt to rising sea levels and rising temperatures; and
• national capacity: in Nigeria, a climate change policy framework is now in place, mitigation analysis studies are under way, and awareness among the public and decision makers has helped make the issue a priority for the country.

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Spotlight

Find Out More

• Environment Canada Climate Change Find out what Canada is doing to combat climate change and what you can do to help
• What is climate change? Read more about the causes and effects of climate change.
• Glossary of Climate Change Terms