Connecting countries to climate technology solutions
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Climate and Development Knowledge Network

Network member number:
N0003
Acronym:
CDKN
Address:
Climate and Development Knowledge Network, 7 More, London Riverside, London SE1 2RT, UNITED KINGDOM
Relation to CTCN:
Network Member
Knowledge Partner
Type of organisation:
Partnership
Type of climate technology services:

The Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) supports decision-makers in designing and delivering climate compatible development, through research, advisory services and knowledge management, in support of locally owned and managed policy processes. The CDKN work in partnership with decision-makers in public, private and non-governmental sectors, nationally, regionally and globally, while strongly holding to the ideals of human development and environmental sustainability. Through CDKN, CTCN can provide access to the ELDIS climate change guide (http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/resource-guides/climate-change), a collection of several thousand curated resources (research, policy papers, reports, open-access journal articles and research briefing papers). These resources are available through the search engine of CTCN.

    Contributions

    • Type: 
      Publication
      Publication date:
      Objective:

      The issue of how gender influences the effectiveness of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in tackling climate change is under-researched. This paper offers a systematic review of how gender shapes, and is shaped by, the interaction of ICTs and climate change. It explains why, and how, women tend to be more constrained than men from using ICTs in tackling climate change. Women are systematically disadvantaged in terms of control over and access to assets, institutions and structures, which effects how they adapt to climate change and respond to climate-related disasters.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      Oxfam's Vulnerability and Risk Assessment (VRA) tool develops a holistic, landscape-wide understanding of vulnerability and links up actors across various levels of governance to jointly identify and analyse root causes of vulnerabilities for distinct social groups and later design programmes and risk reduction initiatives accordingly, ensuring that they are equitable, gender-sensitive and effective.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      Green growth is about prosperous economies that are low-carbon, climate-resilient, resource- efficient, clean, biodiverse and sustainable.

      The research programme focused on a number of important aspects of green growth, namely climate-resilient development, the economics of internalising the carbon externality via carbon pricing and the impact of green growth policies on jobs and innovation.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      Results demonstrate that the effects of management on cropland can be beneficial for carbon and nutrient retention without risking (large) yield losses.

      Nevertheless, effects on soil carbon are small compared with extant stocks in natural and semi-natural ecosystem types and managed forests.

      While agricultural management can be targeted towards sustainable goals, from a climate change or carbon sink perspective avoiding deforestation or reforestation constitutes a far more effective overall strategy for maintaining and enhancing global carbon sinks.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      The El Niño phenomenon, whereby warmer than usual ocean water develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific, affects rainfall patterns and temperatures in many parts of the globe. This occurs most intensely in the tropics, and with significant impacts on human health.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      Climate change is recognised as a factor that will increase the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events, notably of droughts and floods to which the agriculture sector is especially exposed.

      Agricultural productivity growth and policy development have allowed the sector to better cope with these risks and reduce overall impacts.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      Although more dispersed urban development is inevitable in some rapidly growing regions of the world, the benefits of such development are unclear, and can represent economic transfers that reinforce existing social inequalities.However, work by the New Climate Economy shows that alternative development paths do exist, such as the ‘3C model’; compact, connected and coordinated urban development that can bring a wide range of economic and social benefits.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      A sound understanding of poverty traps—defined as poverty that is self-reinforcing due to the poor’s equilibrium behaviors—and their underlying mechanisms is fundamentally important to the development of policies and interventions targeted to assist the poor and/or eradicate poverty.

      The authors review the theoretical and empirical evidence on single and multiple equilibria poverty traps at the macro, meso, and, especially, micro levels. In addition they review the literature exploring the various mechanisms that have been posited to perpetuate poverty.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      This analysis from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) suggests some of their highlights of best practices in policy-making, project development and financing that have begun paving the way for more sustainable energy systems.

      It also examines the potential for renewables-based desalination to address the need for sustainable water supply in the arid GCC region.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      The effects of climate change on agricultural systems and food and nutrition security are already severe and widespread. Almost 800 million people are chronically undernourished, and population and wealth growth are set to increase demand for food and feed in the near future. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimate that food production will have to increase by 60% in the coming decades to accommodate this increased demand, and with vulnerable smallholder farmers providing food for an estimated 2 billion people, climate change poses a significant risk to fulfilling this demand.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      Rivers are essential to human well-being. However, many rivers around the world are severely degraded or at risk, which undermines their ability to provide critical ecosystem services and related benefits.

      Furthermore, despite their potential, rivers are often exploited to deliver a relatively narrow range of objectives, to the detriment of river health as well as other human needs.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:
      Approach:

      The climate-smart agriculture (CSA) concept reflects the ambition to improve the integration of agriculture development and climate responsiveness.

      CSA technologies and practices present opportunities for addressing climate change challenges, as well as for promoting economic growth and development of the agriculture sector according to the authors of this country report on Sri Lanka.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      How do different levels of individual payments for environmental services (PES) affect intrinsic and social motivations for forest conservation? Does introducing low levels of PES crowd out these motivations? This paper presents findings from framed field experiments (FFE) conducted with local forest users in Tanzania. The payoff structure represents a common-pool resource situation; participants’ payoffs depend on the number of trees  harvested, and aggregate over-harvesting can harm future harvest.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      Earlier research that reports a correlational pattern between climate anomalies and violent conflict routinely refers to drought-induced agricultural shocks and adverse economic spillover effects as a key causal mechanism linking the two phenomena. Comparing half a century of statistics on climate variability, food production, and political violence across Sub-Saharan Africa, this study offers the most precise and theoretically consistent empirical assessment to date of the purported indirect relationship.

    • Type: 
      Publication
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      Objective:

      The first atlas of its kind, this new publication offers a comprehensive, regional understanding of the changing climate and its impact on water resources in five of the major river basins in the region: the Indus, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Salween and Mekong.
      The atlas shows clearly that the region’s climate, which has been changing rapidly, will continue to do so in the future, with severe consequences for populations locally and downstream. Some of the main points in the atlas include:

    • Type: 
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      Approach:

      The Tropical Andes are the home to many diverse communities, from remote farming villages to large urban centres and capitals, such as Merida, Bogotá, Quito, Cusco and La Paz. In total, about 60 million people live between 1,000 to 4,500 meters. The climate in the region is tropical, with low seasonal variation in temperatures. However, there is strong seasonality of precipitation, in particular in the Peruvian Andes. In Colombia and Venezuela, the Andes are generally more humid, while the Altiplano and the Bolivian Andes are drier.