South-South Summit, Beijing - July 2013

South-South Summit: Climate Change Adaptation: Policy, Practice and Legislation

A milestone climate change conference took place in July 2013 in Beijing with participants endorsing the new Guiding Principles for Climate Change Adaptation: South-South Cooperation, Practice, and Legislation, a landmark guide for future policy, legislation, implementation and cooperation on climate change adaptation in the global South.

The three-day International Conference on Climate Change Adaptation: Policy, Practice and Legislationdrew 150 leading policymakers, legislators, experts and representatives of multilateral agencies from China and 35 developing countries to Beijing to explore major opportunities for China and developing countries to work together to make their countries and communities more resilient to the impacts of climate change. Conference participants also had the opportunity to learn of China's achievements in planning for and responding to climate impacts.

The conference was organised by the Adapting to Climate Change in China (ACCC) project in partnership with The Global Legislators’ Organisation (GLOBE International) and The INTASAVE Partnership & CARIBSAVE.

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“[We] wish for a continuing successful relationship through triangular cooperation as China meets its South-South Cooperation commitments and international commitments on climate change.”

Madam Huang

Director of the International Cooperation Division of the Climate Change,
Department of China's NDRC*

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Conference Outcomes

• Every participant gave their unqualified support to the conference’s landmark document, Guiding Principles for Climate Change Adaptation; South-South Cooperation, Practice and Legislation and their support for another conference in 2014.


• GLOBE International will take the Guiding Principles to the 2nd GLOBE Climate Legislation Summit in Bogota, Colombia, in October, where they will be discussed and endorsed by legislators from over 60 countries.


• The INTASAVE Partnership has announced a joint initiative to continue to build on this work with China, the UNFCCC, and developing countries around the world.


• The INTASAVE Partnership will establish a high-level international advisory board and will also hold an annual event on South-South Adaptation: Policy, Practice and Legislation taking place in South Africa in 2014.

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"Although the impacts of climate change are local and varied, there is much we can learn from each other about how to approach our response. That is why we have developed a set of Guiding Principles that will help legislators and policymakers to ensure that the response is as effective as possible and learns the lessons from others' experience."

Hon. C.T. Frolick, MP

National Assembly of South Africa

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About the "Guiding Principles"

The Guiding Principles provide concrete recommendations for the future direction of climate change adaptation, a synthesis of good practice and ways to strengthen responses by working together.

The primary points of the document are:

• There is a strong need for anticipatory adaptation, underpinned by a risk management approach, solid monitoring and evaluation, and scaled up knowledge platforms to inform future work;


• Adaptation requires a broad range of practice, policy, and legislation that builds on responses from and engagement with all stakeholders. Responses will include those that use traditional knowledge;


• Public funding continues to be important but so too is an enabling environment for private sector involvement. This will include Public-Private-Partnerships, private investment, corporate responsibility and climate-compatible business practices;


• South-South Cooperation should provide opportunities to share lessons learnt and to contextualise these to national and subnational circumstances;


• Developed countries have an important role to play in encouraging and enabling South-South cooperation, in line with existing international commitments, to support the efforts of developing countries.

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The principles are based on an agreed need to establish a principled and flexible model of climate change adaptation in order to pursue the goals of increasing the resilience and adaptive capacity of societal and ecological systems. The principles reflect the four stages of successful adaptation: planning, implementation, evaluation and dynamic refinement.

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