At the end of four years, Bhutan will have its first fully formulated National Adaptation Plan that will address the impacts of climate change. The adaptation plan will have a strong focus on water with a complete risk assessment and management.
Today, water is one of the key factors for hydropower and agricultural sectors. The project worth 3 M USD is granted by the Green Climate Fund and is supported by the United Nations Development Programme.
National Adaptation Plan is a long term tool for addressing climate change adaptation. The process to formulate and implement National Adaptation Plan is undertaken by developing countries to address the adverse impacts of climate change, which will help increase climate resilience and incorporate climate change adaptation into development.
“It’s very important for a country to do the risk assessments, the prioritization of adaptation options, the scenarios for the future, the climate scenarios and socio-economic scenarios and also to do the mainstreaming in the planning and budgeting system. So National Adaptation Plan is a process that actually helps countries to kind of tackle all these climate challenges over medium to long term,” said Rohini Kohli, the Lead Technical Specialist at National Adaptation Planning, UNDP.
Bhutan is very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. So the adaptation plan is expected to build a stronger integrated system for planning, budgeting and monitoring as well as identifying programmes to reduce vulnerability to climate change.
“There will be a lot of assessments done for this project, a lot of capacity will be enhanced, we will also be focusing on research and climate change adaptation. So it will give us more informed decision making when it comes to prioritizing our needs for tackling climate change and its impacts,” Sonam Lhaden Khandu, the Officiating Chief for Climate Change Division, NEC said.
National Environment Commission will lead the formulation and implementation of the National Adaptation Plan in collaboration with several other government agencies, civil society organizations and academia.
