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Concept for Climate Service Index Development Case from CSI

CSI aims to empower decision-makers to make greater use of Climate Services when planning infrastructure investments and thus help increase infrastructure resilience. In this way, it is helping to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9.
Concept for Climate Service Index Development Case from CSI
Enhancing Climate Services for Infrastructure Investments

Introduction

This resource was submitted by the Climate Risk Institute for theCanAdapt Climate Change Adaptation Community of Practice.

This article is an abridged version of the original text, which can be downloaded from the right-hand column. Please access the original text for more detail, research purposes, full references, or to quote text.

Every year, emerging economies and developing countries invest billions in long-term infrastructure projects. However, their plans often fail to take account of future climate change. This leads to high risks of damage and misguided investments that harbour potentially serious consequences for the economy and society. Many countries – amongst them Brazil, Costa Rica and Viet Nam – have now launched efforts to raise the resilience of their infrastructure, prioritising this as a target in their (Intended) Nationally Determined Contributions ((I)NDC). Known as Climate Services, user-specific and customized climate information and products (e.g. risk and vulnerability assessments) that enable public and private decision-makers to manage climate risks and opportunities form a major cornerstone for achieving this target. Many countries so far lack the institutional, technical and servicerelated capacities they need to set up and mainstream Climate Services in their planning procedures and regulations. Amongst the first international initiatives to take up this challenge is the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The project Enhancing Climate Services for Infrastructure Investments (CSI) forms part of Germany’s International Climate Initiative (IKI). In accordance with a resolution by the German Bundestag the IKI receives backing from the country’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).

CSI Background Information

CSI aims to empower decision-makers to make greater use of Climate Services when planning infrastructure investments and thus help increase infrastructure resilience. In this way, it is helping to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9. How to evaluate the impact of a project´s outcome is therefore of utmost importance. However, the multiple interacting factors, the different context among the countries and the long-term effect poses some challenges when measuring the scope of CSI. Gathering, defining and selecting criteria that better portrayed all enabling conditions for increasing the use of Climate Services help forwards. Having said that, CSI developed a composite Climate Service Index for the assessment of the impact on the provision and use of climate services within each partner country. As two sides of the same coin; provision and use are separately assessed. Whereas User-Index establishes important conditions for the use of CS by managers and planners in infrastructure investments, the CS-Index focuses on the quality of the service based on the five pillars of the Global Framework of Climate Services. Even though, CSI´s support does not encompass all possible criteria, it still shades light into the influence of the project on the climate services among all partner countries.

Suggested Citation: Lotzen, K. (2019). Concept for Climate Service Index Development Case from CSI. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). https://climate-resilient-infrastructure.com/wp-content/uploads/2019_GIZ_CSI_Global_Concept_for_CS_Index_Development.pdf

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