Title: Climate change adaptation under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and related documents
Abstract: This chapter analyses the development of international adaptation law under the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, as well as in the EU and at a domestic level. It finds that although adaptation to climate change is, together with mitigation, the main aim of the 1992 UNFCCC, adaptation remained a neglected topic within the international arena until well beyond 2007, when the IPCC indicated that, for some impacts, adaptation is the only available and appropriate response. The international community did do some early work on adaptation, such as the adoption of guidelines in 2001 to help developing countries to draft NAPAs and the establishment of the Adaptation Fund in the same year. The lack of attention to adaptation was generated by fear among decision-makers that attention to adaptation would deflect attention from mitigation. It is only since the adoption of the Cancun Adaptation Framework and the establishment of the Adaptation Committee in 2010, that the topic has been placed high on the agenda. Under the legal framework offered by the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol, international discussions on adaptation mainly revolve around the distribution of funds to developing countries to finance adaptation measures in these countries. Many such funds now exist, such as the Adaptation Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund and the newly established Green Climate Fund. All of these funds finance adaptation projects, primarily in developing countries. After the adoption of the Paris Agreement, national and local adaptation planning is becoming more mainstream across the globe. Thanks to bringing adaptation under the Paris Agreement compliance mechanism, including the global stocktake, it can be expected that this will only increase soon.