National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) – An Assessment of Workers’ Rights

Nazmul Huq[1]

Department of Human Ecology

Vrije Universiteit Brussel,

Brussels, Belgium

E-mail:

Jean Hugé

Department of Human Ecology

Vrije Universiteit Brussel,

Brussels, Belgium

E-mail:


Abstract

Agriculture is the driving force of the economy of the Least Developing Countries (LDCs) and most of the workforce is involved in that sector. Climate change is the biggest threat to agriculture due to its vulnerability to climatic variability. Hence, the agrarian workforce is considered as the most vulnerable community to climate change impacts. Most LDCs developed their National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) which is the interim strategy to adapt with the climate change. This paper examines National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) of three Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to see how their NAPA policies react with agricultural workforce. The evaluations of the NAPAs are conducted assessed on three criteria: rights to participation, rights to livelihood and rights to alternative livelihoods. The findings shows that the NAPAs does not take agri-workers’ rights into account and do not valuate the role of agriculture sufficiently. The paper suggests some strategies that can be followed by the agricultural workforce can perform to adapt and mitigate the climate change impacts. The paper also suggests lobbying from the unions at national level for n integration of agri-workers as major stakeholders to deal with adaptation policies.

Key Words: Adaptation, Agriculture Labour, Climate Change Impact, Mitigation, NAPA

1. Introduction

Small States Developing States (SIDs) are especially vulnerable to climate change vulnerabilities due to their geographic locations, limited resource base and due to the strong influence of the oceanic circulation system. Whereas no country is immune (World Bank, 2009) from the adverse impacts of climate change, SIDs show some additional vulnerability characteristics of climate change s their climate is influenced by large ocean-atmosphere interactions such as trade winds, El Niño and the monsoons (UNFCCC, 2007a). These climate characteristics, combined with their particular socioeconomic situations make SIDS, among which are 12 LDCs, some of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change (UNFCCC, 2007b). Sea level rising threatens their resource bases, especially the agricultural sector where much of their population is involved in. The United Nations framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) calls for an immediate adaptation action package called National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA)[2] to climate change vulnerabilities realizing the facts that even if the best practices of mitigation action are deployed some of the impacts are unavoidable. NAPAs aim to develop of short and midterm adaptation plan consists of a series of tangible adaptation projects for the adaptation of the most vulnerable sectors.

The paper is a review of the consideration of the rights of agri-workers in the NAPA documents of 3 most climate vulnerable Small State Islands (SIDs) located in the Asian Pacific region. The names of the States are the Maldives, Vanuatu and Kiribati. The paper seeks to answer how NAPAs take environmental justice and rights towards agricultural labour into account. The consequences of climate change impacts hit the agriculture devastatingly as well as the workers involved in the sectors. The focus of the paper is to examine whether agricultural labour rights are considered in NAPAs, what protection mechanisms are deployed to save their livelihoods and what role the huge labour force can perform for mitigation and adaptation.

2. An Overview of National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA)

The NAPA is the configuration process of identifying immediate adaptation needs and actions. According to UNFCCC the NAPAs provide a process for LDCs to identify priority activities that respond to urgent and immediate needs with regard to adaptation to climate change (UNFCCC, 2009b). They defined the NAPA as following

National adaptation programmes of action (NAPAs) provide a process for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to identify priority activities that respond to their urgent and immediate needs to adapt to climate change – those for which further delay would increase vulnerability and/or costs at a later stage. The NAPAs focus on urgent and immediate needs – those for which further delay could increase vulnerability or lead to increased costs at a later stage (UNFCCC, 2009a).

The back-story behind establishing NAPA has been initiated by the seventh Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC that was held at Marrakech in 2001. The Marrakech Accords that emerged from this process included three funds relevant to adaptation. The Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) is one of them. It has been set up to support the 48 of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable nations in adapting to climate change impacts (Abdullah, Konate, Muyungi, & Reazuddin, 2009). The chronological evolution of the NAPA concept can be briefly listed as follows (UNFCCC, 2009a):

-  Article 4.9 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recognizes the specific needs and special situations of the LDCs.

-  Decision 5/CP.7 of the 7th Conference of the Parties (COP) also acknowledged the specific situations of LDCs, in that they do not have the means to deal with problems associated with adaptation to climate change, and established an LDC work programme including NAPAs as well as other supporting activities.

-  Decision 28/CP.7 set the guidelines for NAPAs.

-  Decision 29/CP.7 set up an LDC Expert Group (LEG) to provide guidance and advice on the preparation and implementation strategy for NAPAs.

The NAPAs are expected to focus on the urgent and immediate needs for which further delay could increase vulnerability or lead to increased costs at a later stage. UNFCCC puts emphasis on using existing information for preparing NAPAs which will be action oriented, country-driven, flexible and based on national circumstances (UNFCCC, 2009c) unlike other national development plans such as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP).

To date, 42 NAPAs have been prepared and submitted to the UNFCCC secretariat and the remaining 6 are expected to be completed by 2010 (UNFCCC, 2009b). To date, 433 projects have been identified by NAPA and only four major categories occupy 80 percent of the total projects (UNFCCC, 2008) (UNFCCC, 2009b) (UNFCCC, 2009d). The largest (n=138) number of projects is in agriculture and food security followed by 78 water resources projects, 62 on terrestrial ecosystem and 50 on marine and coastal management. Besides, 45 projects have been identified for disaster management and early warning system, which is also a significant number (UNFCCC, 2009b). The estimated costs for the projects are USD 352 million for agriculture and food security, USD 837 million for water resources, USD 146 million for coastal zones and marine ecosystems and USD 133 million for terrestrial ecosystems (UNFCCC, 2009b). It has been estimated that the total required cost to implement all 433 projects is least USD 2 billion. This amount is required to implement the urgent and immediate needs to address the challenges of climate change in LDCs (Ibid).

The preparation of a NAPA is a systematic process. UNFCCC has defined several steps to make the NAPA democratic in nature, inclusive, participatory, action-oriented, country driven, and off course be responsive to climate change adaptation. According to UNFCCC guidelines (UNFCCC, 2009c) (UNFCCC, 2009d), following processes have to follow to prepare a NAPA:

-  Establishment of NAPA team and multidisciplinary teams: It must balance inclusiveness with efficiency, and include the most relevant key players in order to capture the country’s immediate and pressing climate change issues. The teams should be cohesive and enduring through the NAPA preparation and implementation process in order to ensure institutional memory and continuity, notwithstanding the common problem of high staff turnover in government agencies of LDCs

-  Synthesis of available information: The second step guides the collection of available information on adverse effects of climate change and coping strategies, taking into consideration national development plans, strategies and programmes.

-  Rapid participatory vulnerability assessment: This stage involves integrated assessment of current vulnerability where existing information is missing or inadequate and potential increase in climatic hazards and associated risks. It focuses on identifying climate-related vulnerable livelihoods. Regional workshop with different stakeholders provide a detail insights of climate vulnerability and it is one of the imperatives of this stage

-  Consult stakeholders and the public: LDCs have become increasingly experienced at processes that integrate the views of all interested parties or stakeholders, as well as the general public, into project decision-making. The diversity of stakeholders includes government ministries, academic and research institutions, NGOs, civil society organizations, community-based organizations, political and traditional leaders, private sector, including small to medium sized enterprises.

-  Identify potential NAPA activities: identifies relevant adaptation options including capacity building, policy reform, integration into sectoral policies and project-level activities.

-  Prioritize criteria and screen activities: Current NAPA guidelines already provide some guiding principles for selection criteria, including degree of poverty reduction, extent of adverse effects of climatic changes, cost effectiveness, and synergies with Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs) and other regional initiatives.

-  Rank activities: With the list of adaptation options prepared and criteria selected and weighted, there are several tools that can be used to prioritize and screen the NAPA activities. Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) are two most common tools for ranking activities.

-  Develop NAPA project profiles and submission of NAPA: This is the final stage of NAPA preparation and after completion of projects NAPA is submitted to UNFCCC for its consideration.

In brief, above eight stages are followed to prepare a NAPA before submitting it to UNFCCC. As stated earlier, 42 countries have already submitted their NAPA to UNFCCC among which 138 projects belong to the agriculture and food security sector. This paper focuses on the agricultural sector and its related labour force . An analysis of the relevant documents reveals the major agricultural projects that have been identified by the submitted NAPAs. Among those projects, the following are most repeated (UNFCCC, 2009a) (UNFCCC, 2009d) (UNFCCC, 2009b) (UNFCCC, 2009c):

-  Change of planting dates

-  diversification of crop production by breeding resilient crops (drought resilient for drought prone areas, and salt resistance for coastal zones)

-  fodder production

-  reseeding of rangelands

-  water harvesting

-  construction and rehabilitation of reservoirs/dams

-  water saving irrigation techniques

-  land use planning

-  soil conservation

-  food preservation and processing through improvement of small scale industries

-  food/cereal banks

3. SIDS, Climate Change Impacts and Agriculture

The Small Island Developing States (SIDs) comprises 51 States and territories that are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and that are already feeling its impacts (UNFCCC, 2008). The projected impacts of climate change cross all sectors and the vulnerability and low adaptive capacity of SIDs is inextricably linked to the socio-cultural and economic context of these island States (UNFCCC, 2008). The Fourth Assessment Report (FAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explores the key sectoral vulnerabilities and impacts. The report has firmly identified several impacts of climate change with very high and high confidence[3]. It states that (IPCC, 2007b)

-  SIDs have special characteristics which make them especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, sea level rise and extreme events (very high confidence)

-  Sea level rise is likely to exacerbate inundation, storm surge, erosion and other coastal hazards, thus threatening the vital infrastructure that supports the socio-economic well being of island communities (very high confidence)

-  There is strong evidence that under most climate change scenarios, water resources in small islands are likely to be seriously compromised (very high confidence)

-  Climate change is likely to heavily impact coral reefs, fisheries and other marine based resources (high confidence)

-  On some islands, especially those at higher latitudes, warming has already led to the replacement of some local species (high confidence)

-  It is very likely that subsistence and commercial agriculture on small islands will be adversely affected by climate change (high confidence)

Different studies also confirm the major sectoral vulnerabilities of SIDs. Water, agriculture and food security, health, terrestrial ecosystems and coastal zones are identified as most potential vulnerable sectors (UNFCCC, 2005) (IPCC, 2007b) (UNFCCC, 2008). It is very likely that due to the erratic behavior of climatic components agricultural production will face severe impacts such as short term crop failure and long term production decline (IFPRI, 2009) (Stern, 2006). According to the reports published by IFPRI (2009), and FAO (2004) thin markets, a lack of diversification in production, a high degree of economic openness, rapidly growing population, susceptibility to natural disasters, lack of economies of scale, remoteness, high transportation and communication costs and costly public administration and infrastructure may unlock the high exposure to agricultural and food insecurity of SIDs. Therefore, it can be concluded that the livelihoods of the numerous agricultural labour/workers will be seriously at stake unless necessary actions are taken urgently.

4. Climate Change and Rights

Although the climate change problems is already understood as both an environmental and development problem and increasingly also as an economic problem, the social and human rights dimension of climate change has been given very little attention (Aminzadeh, 2007). The issue of climate change can be framed as profound issue of rights. Climate change is seen as the biggest development threat (Klein & Persson, 2008) that will hamper the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 (Oxfam International, 2007). From this point of view climate change is the biggest threat to establish human rights.

The International Labour Organization has 188 conventions on human rights where mostly employer rights have been emphasised (ILO, 2006). All the signatory countries are obliged to comply those entitled rights to the work force wherever deemed necessary. A human rights-based approach provides a conceptual framework for climate change policies; a framework which is normatively based on international human rights standards and which is practically directed to promoting and protecting human rights (HREOC, 2008). From this aspiration, the question is raised to which degree human rights (in this paper agricultural worker’ rights) are being protected in the decision making processes linked to tackling climate change.