Meet the Banks
01/09/08 11:45
Much of the emphasis
about freshwater climate adaptation boils down to
how we manage water through infrastructure like
dams and water management plans like environmental
flows. But someone has to pay for dams, and large
dams are very expensive and complex building
projects. In much of the developing parts of the
planet, these projects are funded by lFIs:
international financial institutions. In practice,
this means large development banks. As a biologist,
I have had little experience interacting with banks
beyond my own checking account. But in the world of
water, they’re important. And in Stockholm’s World
Water Week, I had some enlightening perspectives on
how they are engaging with climate adaptation as
part of their business world.
During an IPCC-sponsored session, one of the panelists was Vahid Alavian from the World Bank. He shared the stage with two climate scientists. During the question component of the symposium, the moderator asked what each of the three panelists would do with 1 percent of global GDP to respond to climate change. Both of the scientists gave reasonably predictable answers: more research (especially on local monitoring efforts), as well as more investment in information management and distribution systems. These are worthy and important responses to climate change, but they are essentially in service of the study of climate impacts.
Alavian responded with a more nuanced approach. “I fully respect the need for more information about climate impacts, but we cannot wait 30 years for that science to come in. I want to see climate adaptation programs based on non-precise decision making. We need this now.”
Clearly, he had made the leap to a subtle understanding of climate adaptation by grasping that “precise” information may be a long time in coming and that we need to move beyond the static models of freshwater ecosystems that have dominated our thinking for too long. The amount of money involved is impressive as well, as I found out later that day.
A colleague saw me across a large room and pulled me out to meet with a loan officer at a regional development bank. It turns out that he specifically manages a climate adaptation fund within the bank. “Money is not the problem,” he said. “I’ve got more than 200 million USD, and there is more all the time. Europe and the North Americans are beginning to put up a lot of money for climate adaptation worldwide.” I asked him how climate change was affecting his decision making. He said the changes were dramatic. “We don’t fund dams for a 1000-year flood anymore. Now we build for 100-year floods, assume that flooding will occur, make sure the dams can survive flooding, and use the money to clear the floodplains of people so no one gets hurt.”
Both of these observations represent a major shift in thinking in these individuals about water management -- away from assuming perfect and powerful knowledge rather than humble, flexible thinking. I hope my first two IFI conversations represent a trend.
