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Annual Report 2021

Resilience in focus at COP26

The conference in Glasgow saw much more attention and funding being driven into resilience and adaptation by governments, the private sector, and communities

THROUGH THE GLOBAL RESILIENCE PARTNERSHIP (GRP), the Global Commons Alliance (GCA) and the exponential Roadmap Initiative (ERI), the SRC was involved in several initiatives aimed at promoting resilience, nature and exponential action, in an effort to make them more prominent on political agendas.

COP26 centred around three major campaigns: Race to Zero, Race to Resilience and Nature Positive.

The GRP was a lead partner in Race to Resilience, while the ERI was a lead partner in the Race to Zero campaign and the GCA hosted the Nature Positive campaign.

COP Resilience Hub

The GRP invested a significant amount of time and resources into the COP. Together with partners and with strong interest from the High-Level Champions, COP26 unit and the Cabinet Office, the GRP was able to lead the establishment of the first ever Resilience Hub – a physical and virtual space that was open for the full two weeks of COP26 (picture below).

Image of people sitting in a conference area under a large banner with pictures
COP26 Resilience Hub

With over 154 events hosted by 80 event partners and featuring 176 participating organisations, the hub brought together a community of state and non-state actors in an unprecedented collaboration.

The hub welcomed almost 10,000 physical visitors and also had over 7,500 virtual participants joining from all over the world.

Danida, Sida, USAID and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs endorsed the eight principles for locally led adaptation at the Resilience Hub, where these principles were developed to help ensure that local communities are empowered to lead sustainable and effective adaptation to climate change at the local level.

Voices for the frontline

The GRP also launched the Innovating for Climate Resilience Fund in partnership with the Global Innovation Fund and the Adaptation Research Alliance using seed funding from the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.

The fund will support people living on less than US$5 per day, helping them to build resilience and the ability to adapt to shocks and stresses.

Furthermore, alongside the Climate and Development Knowledge Network and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, the GRP launched the Voices for the Frontline e-book, which summarises the voices heard in frontline stories collected from around the world.

It looks at what communities have done to retain hard-won development in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis and multiple other shocks.

Annual horizon scan

SRC researcher Thorsten Blenckner was a co-author of the Ten scientific insights, an annual horizon scan study supported by the World Climate Research Programme, the Earth League and Future Earth.

It was presented to Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Blenckner made a particularly noteworthy contribution to the ninth insight on marine ecosystems published in the report:

“We could gain so much if we focused our efforts on marine ecosystems. They have the potential to deliver a triple benefit: carbon storage, biodiversity conservation and seafood supply.”

New planetary dashboard

The GCA – a coalition of scientific and conservation organisations including the SRC as a partner – created the Nature Zone pavilion bringing together over 70 events from 63 different organisations.

Featuring ministers, CEOs, scientific experts, climate activists and community representatives, the pavilion also hosted a number of press briefings, in addition to producing over 120 interviews that were broadcast worldwide via the Eurovision network.

Owen Gaffney, director of international media and strategy at the SRC, launched a planetary dashboard called EarthHQ.org alongside colleagues. From wildfires and air pollution to coral reef bleaching, the Earth dashboard tracks all forces that put the natural systems supporting life on earth at risk, in almost real time, as they are happening.

It presents a constant flow of reliable, accessible scientific data on what can and must be done to protect the global commons – namely, our vital resources and ecosystems.

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