Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting
Climate change is having an enormous impact in the Andean region, one of the most conspicuous results being glacial melt. Ministers of the affected countries need to draw up policies in order to deal with the environmental, social, and economic consequences, which means that they first need to fully understand exactly what the consequences will be. There are many groups who have investigated the impacts of climate change and produced numerous studies on the subject, but evaluating these studies is not always straightforward. A recent training course—requested by the Comunidad Andina de Naciones (Community of Andean Nations – CAN), financed by the World Bank, and delivered by a team of experts from Bolivia—is helping policy makers make sense of the evidence.
Drs. Lykke Andersen, Luís Carlos Jemio, Oscar Molino, and Gonzalo Lora from the Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD) and the Universidad Privada Boliviana (UPB) travelled all around the South American region in January of this year. The aim was to teach a ten-step guide of Climate Change Impact Evaluation to government officials in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. The process drawn up by the experts starts from a chosen topic and scale of analysis. This ranges from single, local effects of climate change, such as reductions of Fiji’s tuna stocks (Aaheim, 2000), to generalized, global-level impacts (Stern, 2007). The ten steps take officials through understanding these studies to formulating recommendations for public policies. Dr. Lykke Andersen, who directs INESAD’s Center for Environmental Economic Modeling and Analysis, spoke to Development Roast about the course. Read More »