Case for equity between Paris Climate agreement's Co-benefits and adaptation

Abstract

There are heightened debates on limited opportunity of the global adaptation policy goals of the Paris Climate Agreement (PaCA) to match efforts at mitigation and adaptation. This has been attributed partially to the overstatement in Article 7 Paragraph 4 of the PaCA that “greater levels of mitigation” reduces the cost of additional adaptation through mitigation Co-benefits. Therefore, the paper explores how Article 7 of the PaCA partially faults the natural synergy between mitigation and adaptation to equally reduce aggregate emission, although mitigation could help reduce adaptation to physical exposure. Co-benefits are non-climate ancillary benefits from emission reduction that is human-centered. Article 7 of the PaCA overtly favors efforts at mitigation compared to adaptation, yet how much mitigation benefits match adaptation cost including human dimension issues remain speculative and also constrained emission leakages. Thus, the sole attribution of avoiding additional adaptation cost to increased mitigation efforts is far from the reality as adaptation could offset its own additional cost through benefits that reduce emissions, and synonymous to mitigation Co-benefits. For example, the adaptation intentions of ecosystem-based adaptation (Eba), urban NEXUS, integrated water resources management (IWRM) and climate smart agriculture (CSA) in aspects of biodiversity conservation, energy redistribution from human activity, water purification and nutrient recycling are also major sources of emission sink. Therefore, the Article 7 of the PaCA could be enhanced by broadening the definition of Co-benefits to reflect the two-way equity-bound efforts at mitigation and adaptation towards reduced emission leakages and additional adaptation cost.