Raising adaptation action through aligning NAPs and NDCs in African LDCs
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December 2020 - Just last year, the east coast of Africa experienced two of the strongest tropical cyclones to make landfall in history. Cyclone Idai was the most destructive tropical cyclone ever recorded in the southern hemisphere. On the other hand, southern Africa had 50 percent below average rainfall in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa, while Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia had far below the average annual rainfall. From extreme weather events to prolonged droughts, the impacts of climate change have been drastic in Africa during the 21st century.
The state of Africa
News, 18 January 2021
The LDC Initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE-AR) is inviting submissions on effective practice – approaches, methods and incentives – for building a strong community of practice. The submissions will contribute to the development of a learning and knowledge platform.
Water drought leads to cracked land near Manatuto, Timor-Leste. Creating a LIFE-AR community of practice and sharing knowledge and experiences will help all least developed countries to work together to devise climate-resilient development pathways (Photo: UN Photo/Martine Perret, via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Globally, LDCs have led innovative climate responses, building on their decades of experience in managing climate risks and through the delivery of climate adaptation programmes.
BIMSTEC was founded on 6 June 1997, initially as BIST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation). Myanmar’s joining in December 1997, renamed the expanded configuration as BIMSTEC. With Nepal and Bhutan joining in December 2004, this new enlarged reconfiguration retained the earlier acronym but ingenuously redesignated itself as ‘Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation.’ In 2010, it decided to locate its secretariat permanently in Dhaka.
In November 1998, BIMSTEC had identified 14 priority sectors. However, with little tangible progress to show in any, the focus in 2004 shifted to seeking a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). A Free Trade Area Framework Agreement, setting up a Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC), was signed to consider trade in goods and services, investment, economic cooperation and trade facilitation. It has remained essentially a work in progress to date, stymied by efforts to bring SAFTA (The South Asian