Recommendations to monitoring climate-resilient development

A recently published Joint Research Centre (JRC) report has made recommendations on the creation of a global index to monitor the progress of climate-resilient development policies.

It was advised that the index should include metrics on extreme climate events, climate vulnerability, and adaptive capacity, whilst taking into account the climate vulnerability of ecosystem services and the role of natural resources in climate adaptation.

As a first step towards building the index, scientists at the JRC proposed the construction of a platform to act as an interface between science and policy on climate-resilient development.

The platform will bring together global indicators and concepts for climate-resilient and low carbon development. It will provide objective, accurate, and open source information on natural hazards related to climate change, vulnerability, adaptive capacity, mitigation, and resilience. It will also allow users to select indicators and mathematical formulae for building their own index according to their political objectives.

A workshop set to be held in autumn 2014 will lay the foundations for such a platform, bringing together scientists, experts, and practitioners in climate change, disaster risk management, and development.

The JRC said that a global climate-resilient development index would help in the process of identifying countries, groups of people, and sectors most seriously threatened by climate change, as well as putting in place targeted policy actions.

Additionally, the study highlighted the need for international efforts to help ensure the transparency, quality, and consistency of climate data, their coverage and time span, particularly in developing countries whose populations are the most vulnerable to climate change. The study was carried out following recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).