Thursday, March 18, 2021

APAN Hari Kelima


Day 5, 12 March 2021

The 5th Day of APAN Forum Focussing in Finance and Insurance

09.30-09.45 Welcome and Highlights of Day 4

Mozaharul Alam

Mozaharul Alam, Regional Coordinator, Climate Change Sub-programme at United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), welcomed the panelists and participants to the last day or 5th day of the Forum. Luisa Escaler acted as a  technical facilitator. Desiree Llanos Dee, Founder at Tofu Creatives, and Nityalila Saulo, Founder at Tofu Creatives, presented the highlights of the fourth day of the Forum through the Virtual Journey that can be seen on the link http://bit.ly/apan2020visualjourney.

09.45-10.45 Plenary on Finance and Investment

Rico Hizon


Saleem Huq

Oyun Sanjasureen


Preety Bhandary

Tiza Mafira

Rico Hizon, Senior Anchor and Director for Content Development at CNN Philippines, acted as a moderator and led the discussion of this plenary session focussing in Finance and Investment.

The issue of finance  was presented by Saleem Huq, Director at ICCCD at Independent University Bangladesh (IUB) as follows

  1. Adaptation rise for the first time in early 2000, the issue of locally has drawn many agencies to have been improving the climate finance. We need to be able fast, reach, work with vulnerable community.
  2. The realization of Covid-19 pandemic that has revealed and the lack of resilience of the community.

Bangladesh has taken climate change seriously and the government has put hundred million money and project on how to do up-skill for hundred of million people. Bangladesh has coordination with 27 the ministries to put the budget for climate change. The best investment for 5-10 years is to allocate at least 1% budget country for promoting adaptation of climate change. We build the capacity of  adaptation and resilience of climate change, so in the next 5 -10 years we will get the money back that make the country more resilience and adaptation. 

Furthermore Saleem Huq recommended that we need to work together, understand the problem, build capacity, and scale it up by replicating, multiplying the project, and allocating national budget.

Meanwhile, Oyun Sanjaasuren (Director of External Affairs at Green Climate Fund (GCF)),  Preety Bhandary (Chief of Climate Change SDCD (ADB)), Tiza Mafira (Associate Director at Climate Policy Initiative Indonesia (CPI)), and Abid Qaiyum Suleri (Executive Director at Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI)) recommended that we need to encourage private sector to get involved. The role of government is to be responsible for the funding. UN has allocated the funding but it must be significant. Multiple countries get involved is better than one country. And we scale up by smart and clustering small scale project into big project.

11.15-12.45 Parallel Session

Partners not Beneficiaries - Empowering local communities as climate finance actors

Grace Balawag

Judge Donald Kerslake
Farayi Onias

Joy Bailey

Terence Hay-Eddie

This parallel session discussed about how to empower local communities as climate finance actors. The panelists are among others:

  • Grace Balawag, Deputy Program Coordinator at Tebtebba
  • Donald Kerslake, Community Representative at Saoluafata Village Mangrove and Marine Protected A
  • Farayi Onias Madziwa, Team Leader at Adaptation Fund
  • Joy Bailey, Urban Climate change Resilience Specialist at Asian Development Bank (ADB)
  • Terence Hay-Eddie, Programme Advisor at UNDP-implemented GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP)

The first question to be discussed was "What has been your experience at the local level yourself or working with communities in accessing international climate finance?"

The panelists recommended that they have colleagues. They translate the language into local community's language in order to make the local community understand the program and make them get involved in the project. The second question was "Are climate funds accepting higher risks in their financing and programming?"

The panelists discussed that the hinderance to local community is the risk of failure. So the government has to nominate and to have strategy to minimize the hinderance with new mechanism and new small innovation grant. There must be a variety of project, partnership with other countries, scientific evidence, the data is not available,  a concept from Harvard university for nature based solution, empower the community.

The other hindrance is the difficulty in terms of data-based and understanding the requirement; the equipment of information is lack for indigenous community; and a partnership is really needed especially for indigenous community in terms of guidance, evaluating and monitoring.

The next questions to be discussed are "How do we move forward? Will direct access to international climate finance better support local resilience and needs? How can in financing for direct access modalities be reconciled with fiduciary requirements?"

Mr. Farayi and Ms. Tamara responded to the questions by answering that the grants are available for the small group because they share the small grant.  It needs accreditation through local and national level. Adaptation fund get involved local community through the design of program. 

Judge Donald Kersklake answered the question of "What kinds of technical assistance do communities need when receiving funding for adaptation?"  He said that we need data, how to get and to use data, how to implement and to evaluate the program.

And Ms. Joy Bailey responded to the question "What are best practices and lessons learnt in financing urban climate resilience?" She said that we must  invest in people not only infrastructure, more investment to put forward, operation and maintenance, development partner, small skill project should go hand in hand with big project, support local community with good proposal, support the organisation from the very beginning, working along with Monash University, engagement with the youth and women, empower the urban poor.

The question of  "What kind of capacity building is still needed for the local  level to meet monitoring and reporting transparency requirements?" was answered by Grace Balawag. She said that  a big partnership starts with plan, implement, evaluation, monitoring. She facilitated support big capacity building in terms of implementing, reporting, monitoring, transparency requirement, simplifying, better commitment for investment in terms of supporting local community, trust and confident for the local community to accessing, and building the partnership with local community organisation.

She, furthermore, built the knowledge and supported this with scientific assessment. SHe made emphasis the local knowledge, partnership with local government, academia, and CSR. 

14.00 -16.00 Scaling-up Action

Antoinette Taus

Youssef Nassef



Elizabeth Maruma Mrema 

Bambang Susantono



Ovais Sarmad

Tina Birmpili

Ken O'Flaherty


Antoinette Taus
, Goodwill Ambassador at UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) Phillippines, led the discussion of this session.

Youssef Nassef, Director of Adaptation Division at UNFCC, delivered the Forum's Summary and High-Level Plenary: Scaling Up Action as it can be seen from the slides.

       







Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary at Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) UN highlighted for 5 days convention:

  1. Asian Pacific Region, the region and million vulnerable people are impacted by Climate Change and Covid-19 pandemic. 
  2. A strong governance will play important role. Coordination, integration planning, national adaptation plan, and hope will give solution. Solution starts with understanding a simple truth, a new economy and new paradigm are embedded to the nature. 

In addition, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema recommended that interconnectedness must be addressed by all of them together, all actors play the active important role to ensure fully participation in our processes. The voices of youth become louder and stronger. The youth as important agent not only the recipient. The youth must be active engagement under different issue because they are the next leader. 

Meanwhile, Bambang Susantono, Vice President for Knowledge Management at Asian Development Bank (ADB), highlighted three key messages, they are:

  1. Economic recovery from pandemic as the priority
  2. Long term planning. Green infrastructure
  3. Adapt holistic approach to strengthening financial resilience
Furthermore, Bambang Susantono, explained that Asian Development Bank is tackling climate change and enhancing sustainable society. He highlighted three key messages:
  1. Adaptation all capacity to all levels. ADB is working with regional cooperation, developing our members in national level, and has lot skill programmes in local level
  2. To increase our support for adaptation to build resilience
  3. To improve adaptation goal which aligns with Paris Agreement.
Ovais Sarmad, Deputy Executive Secretary at UNFCC, recommended to implement Paris Agreement to bring the world together. Implementation is the focus of Paris Agreement now. National Adaptation Plan and  Technical guide try to reduce the impact of climate change.

Other highlight was recommended by  Tina Birmpili, Deputy Executive Secretary at UNCDD. She said that no matter what we do, how we plan, we are all passionate. We should start to recover land,  to act now, to find action at this pointing time, to take multiple solution in different sectors.

Ken O'Flaherty, COP26 Regional Ambassador at Asia-Pacific and South Asia, highlighted the key messages of the Forum include:
  1. Recognizing the impact 
  2. Adaptation action, resilience campaign, build resistance 
Furthermore, he said that climate change is affecting across Asia Pacific Region: flooding, typhoon, infrastructure, sea level rises, agriculture, and vulnerability community. So adaptation and resilience is really urgent. We want to work together, improve, mobilize adaptation action, accessibility, adaptation action coalition, cooperation of all countries (developed and developing countries), scale up the best practices.

Closing Session
Stewart Maginnis


Niall O'Connor


Akiko Yamamoto


Drupad Choudhury

Yasuo Takahashi


Isabelle Louis


Kazuaki Takahashi


Stewart Maginnis, Global Director at International Union for Conservation of Nature, committed to:
  1. Take an action to scale up the country
  2. Establish standard for nature-based solution
  3. Support country to financing
  4. Mobilize public sector and funding
  5. Build cooperation and collaboration between Asia and Pacific countries

Other commitment was delivered by Drupad Choudhury, Chief Scaling Operations at ICIMOD. He  committed to:

  1. Bring knowledge, to disseminate the knowledge
  2. Continue to pilot innovative approaches especially to women and vulnerable and indigenous community
  3. Develop strong partnership

The other panelists such as Niall O'Connor (Centre Director at Stockholm Environment Institute), Akiko Yamamoto (Regional Team Leader at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)), Yasuo Takahashi (Executive Director at Institute for Global Environment Strategies), and Isabelle Louis, (Deputy regional Director at UN Environment Programme (UNEP)) committed to become partner to ensure on going APAN community practices. They concluded that the 7th APAN Forum has the commitment which include:

1. The voice of youth, women, and indigenous people must represented in the decision making
2. Action must be taken
3. Strong need to adaptation finance
4. Adaptation effort is the centre pillar
5. Major shift need to build resilience especially on vulnerable people
6. To up scaling,  we need appropriate knowledge on partnership

As the host of the 7th APAN Forum, Kazuaki Takahashi, Director of Climate Change Adaptation Office at Global Environment Bureau (MoEJ) said thank you to all partners. AP-PLAT promotes international cooperation that will take action.
We introduce the adaptive recovery. Japan would keep the outcome of the APAN Forum.

Closing Ceremony

Mozaharul Alam closed the 7th APAN Forum.
We have more than 900 unique speakers and participants.
On behalf of APAN Secretariat and partners...thanks to all.
The APAN Forum is successful.

Thank you very much for all the participants and organizers 
who made the 7th APAN Forum successful!


For further information, please visit the link:

More information on the IUCN Global Standard for NbS can be found here:

Join the User Group for the IUCN Global Standard for NbS:








Wednesday, March 17, 2021

APAN Hari Keempat


 09.30-09.45 Welcome and Highlights of Day 3

Mozaharul Alam, Regional Coordinator, Climate Change Sub-programme at United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), welcomed all the speakers and participants to the 4th Day of the 7th APAN Forum. The highlights of Day 3 was presented by Desiree Llanos Dee (Founder at Tofu Creatives) and Nityalila Saulo (Founder at Tofu Creatives) by showing us the Virtual Graphics that can be seen here: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lQ0cf9g=/. Hermes facilitated technical matter.

09.45-10.45 Plenary on Technologies and Practices

Veronica Pedrosa


Ashok Khosla

Wali Haider
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
Suil Kang

The Plenary session on Technologies and Practices was moderated by Veronica Pedrosa, an Independent Broadcast Journalist. The technologies and practices were discussed by some panelists, they are as follows:

  • Ashok Khosla, Chairman at Development Alternatives group and TARAlife
  • Wali Haider, Farmers Major Group Representative at Roots for Equity
  • Kotchakorn Voraakhom, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Landprocess and Porous City Network
  • Suil Kang, Chief Supervisor at International Environmental Research Institute

The discussions from the panelists were summed up in this report. The first panelist, Ashok Khosla gave some examples of Technologies and Nature-based Solution that can be adapted and adopted for Universal Prosperity, Social Resilience, and Climate Change.












Other examples of using technology in Pakistan was proposed by Wali Haider such as Agrofuel,  Biofuel from sugar cane, multitasking machine, and biotechnology that are introduced to the farmers. 

Another example of nature-based solution was recommended by Kotchakorn Voraakhom with her project namely GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE in Bangkok. This project tried to overcome the people's problems such as sinking, flooding, and drowning because Bangkok lies under the sea level.  

Other recommendations of using technology is from Suil Kang. His recommendation are:
  1. Applying tech to resilience
  2. Technology of adaptation should be identified, encouraged and promoted
  3. Partnership, stakeholder, effective coordination, local and national government must be involved.
Those triangular cooperation in prioritizing the resilience of climate change is very needed. 

At the end of the session, Veronica as the moderator asked two questions to the panelists:  
  1. What should be done to resilience of climate change to reduce the disaster that is caused by the climate change? 
  2. And what should we do by using technologies and practices to adapt to resilience of climate change?
The first panelist, Wali Haider, suggested that (looking from the rural perspectives) we should develop sustainable production, indigenous knowledge, maximizing the productivity, adopt and adapt agriculture such as crops that is the result of using the technology. Meanwhlile, Kotchakorn Voraakhom (looking from the urban perspective) said that the balance of bottom up and top down policy is very important. 

Differ from the previous panelists, Suil Kang (looking at his perspective) suggested that  we need to strengthen resilience, we need innovation and technology solution, we need consider and apply appropriate technology and consider local context, consider stakeholder, consider all aspect of technology (hardware, software), and of course cooperation is also really a key of that. 

To sum up the discussion, Ashok Khosla recommended that we need to show to the society to make sure that the financial value of the nature are forest, water, and biodiversity.

11.15-12.45 Building community resilience by scaling up women's access to technologies and strengthening voice and leadership

Mohammad Naciri

Buena Bernal

Nadya Hutagalung



Prof. Joyashree Roy



Soma Dutta

Nguyen Van Anh

Asa Heden

The discussion of this session was moderated by Nadya Hutagalung, an Environmental Advocate & TV Presenter at United Nations and founder of Green Kampong. She asked some questions to the panelists such as "How to support women to access to technology?" and "How Covid-19 impact women?"

Mohammad Naciri (Regional Director at UN Women) discussed on how women can amplify and empower to the situation of Climate Change and pandemic Covid-19 and how to bring practices to resilience.

Asa Heden, Head of Development Cooperation at Embassy of Sweden in Bangkok, said that woman is an agent of change. Their quality is important for resilience of climate change. Sweden has three agendas for women: right, respect, rule of law. Sweden also gives chance to women and girls to improve their capacity, to have equal access in decision making, equal right, accountability, empowerment, and transparency. 

In line with Asa Heden's perspective, Prof. Joyashree Roy (Bangabandhu Chair Professor at Asian Institute of Technology) said that women are as change makers. Women leadership and voices must be put in the agenda. How women can be change makers to resilience, women need:

  1. more information
  2. to understand her role 
  3. to have option to choice
  4. to have access to technology, infrastructure, information, training
The institution have important decision to empower women to resilience. The institution must change and use the technology quickly by training and investment the technology facility.

Vietnam,  as Nguyen Van Anh (Director at CHIASE) said, has made a big effort in reducing the poverty in the last ten years. The ethnic minority, poverty, economic, education, access to water, technology, natural disaster, agriculture, gender equality are the issues in ethnic  minority in Vietnam. But some 
efforts have made in Vietnam in resilience to Climate Change:
  • processing area in mountainous area or ethnic minority to improve the agriculture product
  • all women have good services
  • women receive some support for the housework from husband, doctors, etc.
According to Buena Bernal, as a Journalist at CNA (Chanel News Asia),  the success factor in women is providing news room management such as room for news,  for healthy, for story telling,  for mass protest, for vaccination, for humanity, etc. Baseline information and data are also very important for empowering women.

Other question from Nadya to the panelists: How do we scale up women to build community resilience?

There are multiple answers from the panelists regarding to multiple role of women in building community resilience. Some of the answers are as follows:
1.  Women must be supporting each other. According to Soma Dutta, things that  must be considered if we want to empower women 
  • Women work in groups
  • Enterprise women in capacity building
  • The important of mentorship
2. Women  need more science, collaboration, paving the way for other women, giving chance female to be a leader, knowledge, no gender bias discrimination. Story telling that tells women  and show that women is has the important role in the community (Buena Bernal).

3. Nguyen van Anh suggested that
  • Active participation from the women is really appreciated
  • The need aspiration and expectation from women leadership
  • Women empowerment or empower women in gender equality, long time support for women,  build the capacity for women in technology, internet, information
  • Gender law to help the women
  • We need policy maker in local/community and national level
  • Build capacity on women through forum discussion. 
4. Prof. Joyashree recommended that
  • Women must have access to technology to carry on their house working for example: cooking, water heating, etc. so they could not loose their livelihood.
  • No gender disaggregation
  • New paradigm where women can lead without falling behind
  • Give a chance for women to become a leader. Targeted information. Who are women leaders who wants to change the community through media. 
  • Women need infrastructure, financial, all targeted on that, all best practices from women to show to the community through mass media in order to be a role model to be a sample of how to build the capacity of women
  • Investing/promoting women will add value, for example telling the problem to change maker story, we need change framing the issue from problem maker into the changing maker.
More information about women can be seen on the link: https://www.empowerforclimate.org/en

14.00-15.30 Harnessing Climate Technologies and Practices to Strengthen Nature-based Resilience 

Clara Landeiro

Rose Mwebaza

Sanjay Srivastava

Hak Mao

Maija Bertule

Trupti Jain


Roland Treitler


Clara Landeiro (CTCN Regional Manager -Asia-Pacific at CTCN) as a moderator asked some questions to the panelists. The question number one is "What can be learned from the regions' experiences in implementing climate technologies and practices for nature-based resilience that can be leveraged to address current and post pandemic challenges?"

The panelists in this session are among others:
  • Dr. Rose Mwebaza, Director at CTCN
  • Dr. Sanjay Srivastava, Chief of Disater Risk Reduction, UN ESCAP
  • Dr. Hak Mao, Director of the Department of Climate Change at Ministry of Environment Cambodia, GSSD/MoE
  • Ms. Maija Bertule, Senior Technical Advisor, UNEP-DHI Centre on Water and Environment
  • Ms. Trupti Jain, Founder Director at Naireeta Services Private Limited
  • Roland Treitler, Senior Advisor at GIZ
OECD as reported by Dr. Rose Mwebaza suggested that nature-based and nature-based recovery are important.  Clean water and flood protection are highly dependent on biodiversity. Covid-19 do not compromise with biodiversity. OECD fosters cross sector, technology and practices in Asia Pacific region. The example of environment Best Practice is from Peru  with Green Climate Fund programme.

According to Dr. Sanjay Srivastava, we need technology of protecting cost, adaptation scientific strategy, and nature-based equipment to combine with other nature-based resources such as developing using machine and  data statistic.

Dr. Hak Mao gave some examples of project in Cambodia. Recently we have regional project in the coastal area of Cambodia. The project is to restore the dam, to provide water and to attract the tourist. Another project is to promote non timber forest product, to protect the natural resource, to protect soil erosion and to promote ecotourism. 

Ms. Maija Bertule works with the supporting technical to increase the awareness of nature-based solution, political will, interest in designing deliver ecosystem services in the community. Nature-based solution plays important role on daily basis in providing livelihood. The experience of water management, biodiversity protection, climate change adaptation, ecosystem protection are very important.

According to Ms. Trupti Jain, we have to sustain at the root level and to coordinate among Asia Pacific countries.

Second question from the moderator Clara Landeiro is "What are major barriers and opportunities to foster wider adoption and scale up of nature-based climate technologies and practices?"

The panelists recommended different answers to that question. Introduce technology as catalyst is the answer from Dr. Sanjay. The barriers that we face according to Dr. Hak Mao are limited in depth research on how important the nature-based solution and limited study of benefit of technology. So through this forum we have opportunity to promote nature-based solution in the country. It is in line with the answer from Maija Bertule that we need a lot more dialogue. We hope that through this forum we can have the opportunity to build existing process for nature based solution policy, to build mechanism, and to build the awareness of nature based solution. And the recommendation from Trupti Jain is that we should invest in technology and all nature-based practices must be replicated collectively.

The third question from the moderator is "What are your recommendations to facilitate investment and engagement of stakeholders, including private sector, in nature-based resilience?"

The first recommendation was given by Dr. Hak Mao. His recommendations are to increase the commitment, to increase the mobilization, to encourage people to visit forest or ecotourism, to encourage the study of assessment, to encourage the government to involve. Maija Bertule recommended to bring stakeholders and local community the need to understand the information and to communicate each other. Trupti Jain recommended to involve  local community to find out local based solution. And the last recommendation was given by Roland Treitler. He said that we should learn nature and we need paradigm shift.

The moderator summed up this session. The key notes of the discussion are the role of technology and innovation, providing information, bring stakeholders, private sector, and local community.

Other information can be seen in the link such as about the EbA initiative of WOTR - https://wotr.org/eba/, the value of an ecosystem based approach in dry land regions - https://wotr-website-publications.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/EbA_Info_Brief%20_Series_1.pdf, and analysis of policies and programmes related to EbA https://wotr-website-publications.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/Scaling_Ecosystem_based_Adaptation_in_Maharashtra_India_An_Analysis_of_Policies%20_and_Programmes.pdf.

15.45-16.15 Key Messages from the Day



Mozaharul Alam as the moderator invited the panelists to deliver the key messages from the day. Albert Salamanca said that regional approach to addressing the resilience of climate change is very important. Leadership, mentorship should be given to the women. Women are the change maker who play the important role in building resilience of climate change. Senashia Ekanayake from Sri Lanka concluded that the things to consider are ecosystem area, adaptation action, inclusive, stakeholders, the important of community and young people, partnership and mechanism, and understanding specific local resources. Meanwhile, Arghya Sinha Roy delivered the key recommendations of principle: 
  1. Tehnology and practices and combination of local technology
  2. The importance of long partnership among government and private sector
  3. The importance of ensuring the technology and practices to reach the most population
  4. The accessibility and quality of the outcome.
Furthermore Arghya gave three recommendations on what to be done:
  1. Engaging all partners especially private sector
  2. Partnership
  3. The learning of strategy and practices
The last key messages was from Soumya Bhattacharya. There are three main aspect to consider:
  1. The learning from the region
  2. Major barrier and opportunities
  3. Recommendation to facilitate technology and practices can be important to post pandemic situation and to resilience of climate change
16.30-18.00 Special Event Filling the Adaptation Gap

Osamu Mizuno


Kazuaki Takahashi


Valerie Kapos

Aiping Chen


Rajarshi Dasgupta



Tetsuo Kuyama


The speakers of this last session of the day are:
  • Osamu Mizuno, Principal Fellow at IGES, moderator
  • Kazuaki Takahashi, Director of Climate Change  Adaptation Office at Global Environment Bureau, MoEJ
  • Valerie Kapos, Head of the Climate Change and Biodiversity Programme at UNEP World Conservation
  • Aiping Chen, Regional Director, GCA (Global Center on Adaptation) China
  • Dr. Rajarshi Dasgupta, Senior Policy Researcher at Institute for Global Environmental Strategies
  • Tetsuo Kuyama, Director of Bangkok Regional Center at IGES
 
The discussions of this session are summed up in the following report. The biggest adaptation gap is monitoring and evaluation on adaptation. Adaptation finance is growing and evolving but the gap is not closing. Implementation of adaptation action is growing worldwide. Significant scaling up of both public and private adaptation is required to narrow the gap.

GCA's Global Business Plan (Global Center on Adaptation) supports to community as can be seen on the picture. 



GCA global programs has five pillars as can be seen on the picture.


Three major climate risks for Asia:
1. Freshwater scarcity
2. Climate induced disasters
3. Rising urban risks

Main adaptation options for fresh water:



The concept of AP-PLAT Capacity Development Program:



AP-PLAT Capacity Development Program Activities 




Please check out the latest reports presented today:


Asia Pacific Adaptation Information Platform (AP-PLAT)

UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2020

UNEP 適応ギャップ報告書2020(エグゼクティブ・サマリー 日本語翻訳版)