On the ground at COP27: Sharing policy solutions for climate adaptation

Last week, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change kicked off the 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26, in Glasgow. Members of J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI) staff team are on the ground at the conference, speaking at events, hosting meetings with potential partners, and learning from our climate colleagues. 
 
K-CAI, in partnership with King Philanthropies, supports evidence generation and catalyzes the scale-up of high-impact policy solutions at the nexus of climate change and poverty alleviation, aiming to improve the lives of 25 million people over the next decade. At COP26, K-CAI staff are meeting with partners to innovate, test and scale evidence-informed climate solutions to help reach this goal. 
 
Every year, the COP brings together global leaders to discuss ambitious policy and technological approaches to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This year, though, the conference is more significant than ever—marking five years since the historic Paris Agreement. 
 
Now, countries are being asked to submit new climate action plans, or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). 2021 is described as a “make or break” year for climate action by the World Meteorological Organization, and with climate impacts continuing to worsen and the dire findings of the IPCC’s latest report on climate change, the urgency for significant climate strategies has never felt greater. 
 
A large component of success at COP26 is mobilizing climate finance. In 2015, as part of the Paris Agreement, high-income nations pledged $100 billion a year by 2020 to low- and middle-income countries to support achieving their NDCs. It was recently announced that high-income nations have failed to meet this financing commitment and will likely be three years late to deliver these funds. Climate finance will be key for rebuilding trust between nations in order to effectively address climate change.
 
But financing alone cannot guarantee effective climate mitigation and adaptation action. Technological and policy innovations do not always achieve their desired effects when they are implemented in the field. Although there is substantial evidence about the causes of climate change and its effects, evidence on the impacts of climate solutions on people and the planet is lacking. Following COP26, decision-makers will be looking for the best climate strategies to invest in—it is critical that financing goes towards and is informed by evidence generation so that we can know the outcomes of climate innovations in real-world settings prior to scaling and have the greatest impact possible. 

Investing in climate solutions that work

In order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,  we need to abate as many tons of greenhouse gas emissions as possible, as soon as possible. Leaders will undoubtedly renew or increase their emissions reduction commitments at COP26, but this is easier said than done. 
 
For example, in a randomized evaluation focused on reducing energy consumption, low-income households were randomly assigned to receive encouragement and assistance to apply for a fully-subsidized residential energy efficiency program in order to test whether these strategies were effective. Despite the intervention, only a small percentage of the eligible households enrolled, and the energy savings of those who did was only around half of the upfront cost of the efficiency improvements. This study exemplifies how factors such as low take-up and savings not matching projections in real-world settings can impact the cost-effectiveness of climate innovations, underscoring the need to evaluate investments in the field before they are scaled.  
 
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will help everyone avoid the worst effects of climate change, which are locked in to intensify over the next thirty years. People in low- and middle-income communities and countries who have the fewest resources to adapt will likely bear the brunt of global inaction.
 
Adaptation strategies are also an important goal at COP26, but like reducing emissions, simply investing in innovations is not sufficient—climate finance must support their evaluation in the field. 
 
An ongoing randomized evaluation in India, funded by K-CAI, is measuring the impact of payments as incentives to reduce groundwater depletion among smallholder farmers. As climate change threatens precipitation and surface water supplies in many regions, effective groundwater management is a key climate adaptation strategy for rural communities. Studies such as this have the potential to contribute essential knowledge to climate investments and which policies are scaled up—but much more practical evidence is needed.

Success at COP26

As global leaders renew and increase their emissions reduction commitments and work to mobilize climate finance at COP26, it’s critical for evidence from rigorous randomized evaluations of potential solutions to guide policy decisions. Without evidence, climate financing and other resources may be squandered on strategies to address climate change that are not effective in the real world. 
 
At J-PAL, K-CAI works to bridge the gap between evidence and policy. Through this work and collaboration between researchers and decision-makers, we can learn and generate new evidence as we take action in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
 
To learn more about partnership opportunities, please contact us at [email protected].  

This is the third and final blog in our series on energy access. Read the first blog post on how electricity billing systems may impact energy access, and the second blog post on emerging evidence and policy lessons for balancing industrial growth, energy use, and climate change.

The impacts of Covid-19, coupled with the war in Ukraine, have made households in Europe more susceptible to energy poverty, particularly as people are bracing themselves for the cold winter months to come. Affordable and reliable energy access is key for households to adapt to increasingly severe winters. Yet, income losses during the pandemic and rising energy prices in response to European dependence on energy imports leave many low-income households unable to pay their energy bills. The French government identifies energy poverty as a person having difficulty obtaining the necessary energy in their home to meet basic needs due to a lack of resources. The European Commission estimates that about 34 million people in the European Union (EU) are experiencing energy poverty to varying degrees. With energy poverty on the rise, European policymakers need to test innovations and scale up high-impact, evidence-informed solutions to support and protect vulnerable households.

The link between climate change and energy

Global temperatures are rising as a consequence of human activity, chief among them the production of energy by burning fossil fuels. Simultaneously, rising temperatures and increasingly extreme weather create challenging living conditions for households across the globe that often require energy access to be able to adapt. Energy and climate change are in a vicious cycle of interdependence: the more our climate changes, the more energy we require to adapt; yet, by meeting our rising energy demand, we further exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions.

Higher income countries are not immune to the effects of climate change, however. They also produce and use energy to guarantee a decent standard of living: cooling homes in the summer, heating and lighting homes in the winter, or ensuring continued access to healthcare. The energy sector accounts for more than half of all EU greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy poverty in Europe: The case for evidence in policymaking

Like climate change, energy poverty does not only affect low-income countries. Despite high average living standards, energy poverty remains a challenge among many low-income households in Europe. In an EU-wide survey in 2020, eight percent of participants reported that they were unable to keep their homes adequately warm. 

Ensuring affordable and equitable access to energy is therefore imperative across the EU. Rigorous evidence is critical to select and employ approaches that have proven effective in different areas—and apply them along the various dimensions of energy poverty. Examples of such strategies might include the targeting of subsidies, lowering overall energy consumption to keep energy prices at check, and nudges and incentives to encourage more effective adaptation.

To effectively address energy poverty in Europe, affordable access to sufficient amounts of energy will be necessary. At the same time, we have to increase efficiency across the different ways energy is used.

Energy-inefficient buildings, for example, pose a challenge to many low-income households. Because higher-quality housing tends to be more energy efficient but also more expensive, Low-income households often struggle to afford the bills that come with heating spaces that are poorly insulated, and thus are particularly exposed to cold spells. A 2020 report issued by the European Commission recommends the “structural renovation of private and public buildings, thereby reducing emissions, boosting recovery and addressing energy poverty.” 

Policymakers should factor in existing evidence when taking action. For example, a randomized evaluation from 2011 to 2014 in the United States found that when encouraged to enroll in a program that offered subsidies for weatherization retrofits to make houses more energy efficient, only about six percent of households took up the offer. At the same time, energy savings from the retrofits fell short of their projections. While households reduced their energy consumption by about 20 percent, this resulted in savings of only about US$2,400, corresponding to half of the projected energy savings over the lifespan of the energy efficiency measures installed. Policymakers will need to carefully think about barriers to take-up and enrollment in energy saving programs, and recognize that real-world energy savings may fall short of their projections. 

Energy poverty: A challenge at the nexus of social protection and climate  

Social protection refers to policies and programs that provide financial assistance to low-income families, insure against shocks, and break poverty traps. Not unlike other climate impacts, energy poverty is a shock that calls for social safety nets. In the context of equitable energy access, governments and utilities may be able to learn from evidence generated on social protection. 

For instance, conditional, unconditional, or labeled cash transfers, vouchers, or in-kind transfers are social protection policies that can help families meet their basic energy needs. The broader evidence on these interventions can inform the design of programs with a focus on energy access. 

Policymakers could also consider adapting targeting methods typically used in the social protection space to identify households at risk of or experiencing energy poverty. Ongoing research in energy access uses administrative data as well as machine learning methods to improve the targeting of households most susceptible to energy poverty.  

While many of these studies were conducted in settings different from the European context, careful adaptation and a focus on behavioral mechanisms may be helpful for European policy design. With more data available and drawing on evaluation findings from outside the energy sector, European countries may be better equipped to effectively address energy poverty.

The way forward: Addressing energy poverty

It is important to recognize that, presently, there is little rigorous evidence on energy poverty in high-income contexts available—though J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative is working to change this. Yet, producing high-quality study results takes time, and the cold months in Europe are around the corner. 

There are two takeaways that policymakers can act on today: first, to couple the rollout of programs, policies, or subsidies with sound, rigorous evaluation now, to understand impacts along the way. Secondly, to draw from and adapt existing evidence from other areas, to inform sensible policy design today.

In the near future, we need more rigorous evidence on how to most (cost)effectively conserve energy and use energy more efficiently. This may be a first step towards lowering energy demand overall, both within individual households, and across countries at large. 

In addressing energy poverty, thinking outside the box may be key: there is ample evidence on targeting and social assistance programs outside the immediate realm of energy and climate policy. Employed carefully, these insights may open the way to testing and evaluating similar mechanisms and approaches in an energy context.

This Earth Day marks an important opportunity to examine the immediate and looming effects of climate change, as well as potential solutions. 

The effects of climate change will worsen over the next thirty years and will disproportionately impact the world’s poorest people. While climate change threatens many areas essential to life, the IPCC’s recently released Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability report finds that food systems, food security, and nutrition are particularly vulnerable through increased pressure on food production. 

Evidence-informed adaptation strategies are urgently needed to address this challenge, which is a growing area of focus for J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI). With generous support from King Philanthropies, K-CAI generates evidence and works with decision-makers to scale high-impact solutions at the nexus of climate change and poverty alleviation. 

Similarly, J-PAL and Center for Effective Global Action’s (CEGA) Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI), with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, & Development Office, funds randomized evaluations testing the impact of farmers’ adoption of many climate-resilient technologies in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa on their productivity, income, and welfare.

Climate change’s threat to food and nutrition

Child malnutrition in the form of wasting and stunting, or when a child has low weight or height respectively, is prevalent in low- and middle-income countries—both causing and exacerbating poverty. This results in higher child mortality rates, harms cognitive development, and impairs education and economic productivity. While stunting has declined over the last two decades, wasting rates have remained persistent and almost half of all deaths in children under five years old are still caused by malnutrition.

Through increased frequency and severity of droughts, floods, and heatwaves and ongoing sea-level rise, food systems are threatened and food insecurity may increase—and children in low- and middle-income communities will have even less access to nutritious food. To prevent these risks, it’s critical to generate evidence and scale solutions that will secure food systems in the face of climate change.

Aligning agricultural yields and climate adaptation

Increasing agricultural yields is an important component of food security. However, agricultural productivity is often at odds with climate change adaptation and resilience strategies. There are two common means of increasing agricultural productivity, both of which can harm the environment in different ways: 

1. Extending existing production to uncultivated lands, which often requires cutting down trees to clear land.
2. Intensifying production through intercropping or higher frequency planting, which can lead to depleting soil of micronutrients and more water use; and new or increased amounts of inputs (e.g., fertilizer and pesticide) on land already under cultivation, which can lead to runoff and water contamination when improperly applied.

There has been substantial research into intensifying agricultural productivity through high-yielding or biofortified crop varietals; high-efficiency inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides; and less labor-intensive agricultural practices. However, a more recent focus is on the importance of feeding the growing world population in the face of climate change through strategies such as modified crops that can withstand climate disasters, resource sustainability, and the development of practices and technologies that can improve productivity while helping farmers adapt to climate change. 

Evidence from randomized evaluations on real-world adaptation strategies

Researchers in the J-PAL network have evaluated the effectiveness of agricultural technologies and strategies to understand their real-world impacts on food security and yields through randomized evaluations. 

Coping with risk

One way to strengthen food systems is to help farmers cope with climate change-induced risks, such as extreme weather events. Adopting new technologies can be effective in helping farmers cope with more extreme weather, but research has shown that risk can be a barrier to farmers’ ability and decision to change their existing practices or adopt new technologies. Sustainable crop management techniques that have been rigorously evaluated include two ATAI-funded studies focused on pit planting in Malawi and building demi lunes in Niger, as well as planting trees to combat land clearing in Malawi. Overall, these studies found that providing incentives and information to farmers, or allowing farmers to self-select into the program, respectively, increased farmers’ adoption of these more sustainable farming practices.

Additionally, there has been a substantial body of research on inputs and financial tools, like weather index insurance to protect farmers from the economic risks associated with extreme weather events. Research shows that weather index insurance protects farmers against losses, but low demand at market prices suggests that alternative approaches are still needed. Stress tolerant crops are a promising way to help mitigate weather risk for farmers. In an evaluation of flood-tolerant seed varieties in India, researchers found that risk-reducing seeds had a clear advantage over traditional seeds during floods and there was no difference in yields between the seed varieties even in unflooded areas. 

Resource management

Although low- and middle-income countries are among those least responsible for climate change, their resources, such as water and land, are often the most threatened. Strategies for conservation and effective resource management can help small-scale farmers cope with these climate impacts. 

Ongoing K-CAI and ATAI-funded research is evaluating the impacts of leveraging price incentives for voluntary groundwater conservation among small-scale farmers in Gujarat, India, and rehabilitating irrigation tanks in Telangana, India. ATAI has also funded an evaluation  focused on subsidizing experimentation with irrigation pumps among interested farmers in Kenya. Previous evaluations have tested strategies like disincentivizing crop burning in India and encouraging the adoption of rainwater harvesting tanks in Kenya. In this last example, researchers found that asset collateralized loans helped farmers purchase water tanks in order to harvest rainwater and better adapt to climate uncertainty. K-CAI is currently funding a scale-up project building on these results.

Improving nutrition of staple crops

In the face of potentially diminishing yields, ensuring that the crops that are available are nutrient-dense is especially important. Staple crops, such as beans, maize, wheat, sweet potato, and rice, make up a large part of people’s diets. But traditional varietals of these crops lack critical nutrients humans need to grow and maintain healthy lives. 

One means of addressing this is through biofortification, which is the process of making crops more nutritious. Scientists have been increasing the nutrients of crops and food for decades, and in many parts of the world, people have been eating micronutrient-fortified foods for years, including iodized salt, Vitamin D-enriched milk, and iron-enriched flour. 

One of the main challenges to improving nutrition through biofortified crops is farmers’ and households’ decisions to grow and eat these more nutritious crop varieties. For example, in Ethiopia, ATAI-funded researchers evaluated the effect of encouraging families to grow and earmark a more nutritious maize variety for children's consumption. They found that households improved grain storage and cooking practices, and children in those households ate more of the improved maize. However, there were no effects on markers of undernutrition, such as height-for-age and weight-for-age, six months after harvest. This suggests that the length of the program or amount of maize was not sufficient to observe changes in children’s nutrition, or there may have been impurities in the grain that reduced its efficacy.

Similarly, evaluations in India on fortified salt and wheat to reduce anemia have found that while uptake increased initially, it was not sustained and ultimately did not reduce anemia or impact the health of the populations studied in either evaluation. These results underscore the need for further research, particularly in the face of climate change. 

Bundling agricultural services

Finally, an approach that is gaining more interest among policymakers is connecting small-scale farmers to agricultural services simultaneously, or “bundling,” to alleviate multiple constraints that farmers face when making investments to increase their productivity or mitigate the effects of climate change. 

While there has been some research on bundling products together, including in Ghana, Malawi, and Ghana, the studies have not shown consistent effects on farmers’ demand for services, welfare, or productivity, suggesting that more research is needed. Digital technologies or bundles may affect the sustainability of various steps in the value chain. This could be through systems such as: 

1. Distributing payments more quickly to allow farmers to buy food for their households; 
2. Providing weather index insurance and weather advisory services through an app; 
3. And linking farmers to buyers on an e-commerce or e-marketing platform to reduce post-harvest losses, more efficiently route crops to a stable buyer, and reduce transport costs for farmers taking their products to public markets. 

J-PAL and CEGA’s new Digital Agricultural Innovations and Services Initiative, generously funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will generate new research to answer some of the lingering questions around digital service provision and bundling on improving small-scale farmer outcomes, bolstering farmers’ resilience to climate change, and connecting farmers to markets in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Investing in evidence

More rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of climate adaptation policies on food security and nutrition is urgently needed. Earth Day is the time for us all to refocus our efforts. 

Researchers need to focus on developing more evidence at the nexus of climate change, food security, and nutrition—particularly on adapting food systems to extreme weather, finding sustainable and local sources of nutritious food, and bundling services to help farmers overcome their productivity constraints. Simultaneously, policymakers need to prioritize evidence-informed decision-making and invest in further evidence generation to determine what approaches are most effective in real-world settings. 

These topics are a growing area of focus for K-CAI. If you are interested in partnering with us to support evidence generation or scale policies proven to work in real-world settings within climate adaptation, food systems, and nutrition, please contact us at [email protected]. 

J-PAL Policy Manager Tanya Kak explains the links between food security and climate change