Climate adaptation for sustainable development
Keywords: climate change
Sustainable development
Paris Agreement
climate risk
adaptation
SDGs

With the impacts of climate change disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable nations and threatening hard-earned development progress, climate adaptation will be crucial to safeguard and contribute to sustainable development. But adapting to the impacts of climate change is challenging in the face of future uncertainties and the risk for wrong decisions to exacerbate development or climate challenges. Whilst an increasing body of research has addressed the need for improved planning of climate adaptation, there remains a gap in aligning such adaptation planning with sustainable development and the global agendas, in particular the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
This thesis addresses this gap by investigating the complex links between sustainable development targets and climate change impacts to better inform climate adaptation planning for sustainable development. A conceptual framework is first developed to better understand the pathways of how sustainable development targets are linked to the impacts of climate change. The conceptual framework highlights the essential role of sectors of society, the economy, and the environment in mediating between achievement of SDG targets and impacts of climate change. This conceptual framework is operationalised through the development of two complementary national-scale methodologies: the first methodology holistically assesses where and how impacts of climate change affect sustainable development targets, whilst the second methodology evaluates how much and what type of adaptation can safeguard and contribute to sustainable development. By spatially translating sustainable development targets and indicators at the level of a nation's sectors and assets, these two methodologies integrate the largely siloed fields of sustainable development and climate change impacts research to inform a more coordinated approach to climate adaptation planning for sustainable development.
Application of the first methodology to the small island of Saint Lucia reveals the impacts of climate change across 22 sectors and half of the nation's built and natural assets, and shows how these impacts interact and propagate to influence 89% of SDG targets. The participatory methods and the cross-sectoral workshops as part of this application helped Saint Lucia add specificity and spatial granularity to 52 adaptation options under its National Adaptation Plan. The second methodology, applied in Ghana, grounds climate adaptation planning in a national sustainable development vision. Using an SDG-risk indicator set, Ghana's climate adaptation needs in the energy and transport sector are evaluated in terms of safeguarding existing SDG target progress. A feasible adaptation strategy to meet these needs is developed through a multi-stakeholder partnership, showing how a combination of built and nature-based adaptation options can deliver up to 116 SDG target co-benefits.
Collectively, the contributions in this thesis provide valuable insights to conceptualise, assess, and evaluate climate adaptation in the context of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. These contributions transcend traditional economic adaptation assessments by placing the global agendas at the heart of the adaptation planning process. As more nations develop and revise their adaptation commitments under the Paris Agreement, the transferable approaches and accompanying decision-support tools developed in this thesis can help ensure adaptation contributes to, rather than detracts from, sustainable development.