ONE UN - The missing target. Housing security in the indicators of the Global Goal on Adaptation (WUF13)

Thanks.
Very good afternoon to people in the room, people online, and welcome to this one UN session here at the World Urban Forum on the title of the Missing Target, Housing Security in the Indicators of the Global Goal on Adaptation.
The title already is very telling.
We will be talking about the Global goal on Adaptation, which is one of the key contents of the Paris Agreement and how far that is addressing topics of housing security or not.
And my name is Simone Zantz.
I'm with the United Nations University's Institute for Environment and Human Security, leading Urban Research there.
I'll be setting the scene, giving you a short introduction before I'll be handing over to my colleagues for a short panel and then for some final remarks.
I'll be introducing the next host.
Sorry, the next facilitator then in a minute.
But let us get back to what is this global goal on adaptation? Why is it relevant to the World Urban Forum to be discussed here? Why is it relevant or should be way more relevant to the urban community? Why did we call it a missing target? Maybe as a very quick recap because we were not exactly sure how familiar everyone here is with the deep dives and with the details inside the Paris Agreement.
The Paris Agreement, under its Article 7, when it was ratified by the signing parties, Um, they agreed to establish the so called global goal on adaptation with a goal to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience, and reduce vulnerability to climate change with a view to also contribute to sustainable development and ensure adequate adaptation response to keep temperature rises below the threshold, that was agreed Now, that has to be operationalized to make it a global goal and that is the exact challenge that parties under different meetings, including the conferences of the parties for the last couple of years, but also other workshops that you can see on the right in this timeline have been working on and actually operationalizing that is not that easy because the key challenge now is to find the exact indicators to measure this and to measure this on a global scale.
And that has started, as you can see, some years back and this is even only showing the last two years where in various sets of workshops, experts that have been nominated by their parties or that have been invited by UNF AAC came together to discuss how to measure best what countries are doing in terms of adaptation.
Well, indicators always come with the benefit of making things measurable, but that at the same time can be a dramatic downside because they will shed a light on something, but forget many other things, or at worst, um, come with the challenge of perhaps including something that could be negative.
That whole global goal and adaptation or the discussions, started with thousands of suggested indicators.
In the last year's climate conference in Blaine, after various political processes which also linked together the last conferences of the parties and the UAE Blaine framework, they came up with overall 57 indicators that were selected out of a list of around 100 and on the left, you can see the different clusters of indicators, but two of them we want to discuss in this session in particular because they are very much addressing what urban community is working on.
Both of them that you can read on the right side of this slide, address relocation and human settlements or human habitats and housing security.
So under one of the overall seven clusters of indicators.
The first one deals with water supply and sanitation and the indicator is the number of people supported in plant relocation processes in response to water related hazards.
In the end, being the devil's advocate, this indicator could be understood as framing relocation as something positive, while the urban community has been dealing with it or has tried to rather find different approaches for people living in hazard prone situations.
That is definitely one challenge where we don't necessarily see climate and urban communities yet corresponding as much as they could to discuss this and also potentially discuss the challenges that come therewith.
Um, the second one is related and it's under the infrastructure and settlements, cluster, which is the proportion of infrastructure.
Again, human settlements are vulnerable to climate related hazards and other extremes, relocated to a safer location.
Again, while that sounds very positive in the first view, um, It can have a different notion.
That is exactly what we want to discuss next.
These are proposed indicators.
They will yet have to be complemented.
It is still a bit of a discussion in process.
With this session here at the World Urban Forum, we now want to kick off a discussion that is now going deeper into the urban community itself to also provide their insights, to provide insights from experts in the room.
Other urban experts to inform what is happening here and also perhaps critically challenge based on the knowledge that urban experts have from the processes over the last decades.
With that, I would now gladly hand over to my colleague Enrique Flo, who is a lawyer by profession with expertise in urban planning and also urban law.
He was the Director and Executive Secretary of the Brazilian Institute of Urban Law.
More at least as importantly, he now is the Executive Director of Institute of Police in Brazil, which is a civil society organization advocating for the right of the city.
He's the right expert for discussing now very critically these targets, the housing security within the global goal and adaptation and also with respect to the right of the City, which is a topic very close to your heart.
The stage is yours, Enrique, to facilitate the next panel.
Okay.
Thank you so much, Simon, for setting the scene in this introduction.
As presented, I'm from Police Institute, a Brazil CO that has been working in the intersection between the Urban agenda and the climate agenda for several years right now.
Since a couple of years ago, we start maybe in CP 28, but mostly in Cop 29, we started to debate all these indicators for the global goals of adaptations.
From Baku and at the same time happening in the Wolf 12 in Egypt, two years ago, we started to debate with these different stakeholders on the climate conversation, but also in the urban field about this.
Last year, we remain following all the debates during the climate conference in Bonn, and then in Cop 30 in Blaine, when actually countries agreed in a group of indicators.
So we are still following this debate because we didn't come to an end about that.
It's important also to have in Wolf 13 and probably in Wolf 14 in Mexico City, this debate regarding the indicators and how communities can be impacted by the measures of adaptation.
So I'll be your facilitator.
I won't be your speaker for this session.
I'm very interested to hear from our guests.
I'll invite you to join us here on the stage, starting with Seren Kisrak Totten, Yes, representing Abtat.
Also Alisandre Frediani representing the International Institute for Environment and Development and Jacqueline Ningz representing Misao from Germany.
And we can start with around a seven minute initial speech from each one of you.
Then I can facilitate a dialogue with questions and trying to make more dynamic this debate and also invite you that are participating here in person also to make questions or to make comments regarding your experience.
I can see that We have people from civil society, from governments, from UN programs and agencies, for example, S is here from the Ministry of Cerities of Brazil.
I think that you also have very important ideas to share with us regarding the indicators for adaptation.
Can we start with you, Saren Thank you very much.
Yeah, sure.
Thank you very much.
My name is Serene Carat as already introduced and it's a pleasure to be here today and talk about this very critical actually and goes to my heart topic, the Global G on adaptation.
The reason why I have actually no real talking points and 7 minutes might be difficult to fill, but the reason why it is so dear to heart is it's a process that has started with the Paris Agreement.
It is a process that has been taken on since then with many, many actors that have fought a definition of what is actually adaptation success? How can we basically, with adaptation success, also have measurements and indicator to channel climate finance much more to adaptation.
It was so interconnected that whole debate about we know exactly what climate mitigation is, but we don't know what is a success story for climate adaptation.
Is it incremental? Is it transformative? Is it every matter that counts or is it a larger objective that we're working towards? To guide this entire community from multilateralism but also us as civil society, what adaptation success means, those indicators were put forward.
But when those indicators were put forward, as Simona said at the beginning, we had ten thousands of them.
It was a process of over eight years fighting from 10,000 to get to a framework of a target.
Among those targets then get 59 indicators, if I'm not mistaken, and 59 indicators that have been so hard fought for.
The reason why I'm stressing that is because the outcome of it is two indicators that are dear to your habitat especially in our stakeholders and the whole message on affordable housing.
Two indicators on human settlements and infrastructure and one of them, I'm paraphrasing is basically saying, adaptation success is when we have moved you out of harm's way and relocated you.
If that is an outcome, then you're giving the ticket to force displacement.
You're giving the ticket to any other pressure on communities.
Do you give the ticket to say, Well, you know what? I have your climate measure.
It says you're living in a flood prone area, I have to evocate you.
I think this is personal.
This is not anymore a target.
This is where the moment really shifted from, wait, we discussed this for eight years and this is the best we could have gotten out.
But then I'm also with the United Nations, which means I have to respect the blue floor, that's how we're calling it.
The blue floor meaning the intergovernmental process that has led to it.
I have to respect that there's multilateralism that has led to this, that every little incremental consensus in this eight years, ten years, if you want to have mattered to fort even that lowest target.
I liked how Simone said it as like, let me be the devil's advocate.
What's the positive story out of this? How do we take what we have now and convert that into still an opportunity? If I have learned one thing from the civil society is they're so resilient.
They're so positive.
They make the best situation of the worst condition.
I'm not saying that a target is the worst condition.
I'm not saying that, but I have that hope that with civil society, the science space, the actors that are around us, we can take a target as it is, as a guidance, as an indicator that was put in there, but it doesn't mean it stops us there, it doesn't stop our ambition to define what is an adaptation success.
As it doesn't stop us to go back to the table and say, well, you know, You do your incremental intergovernmental processes, and that is fine.
And we try to help you to identify what is the metadata to identify those targets.
And I think that is the opportunity still at hand for the next two years.
They call it the bellum to As vision.
To basically see, let's see how we can influence that space and we can only influence this together.
I think in the last eight years, I felt a little bit alone and not because we all hadn't had our voices there, but we might have not been as coordinated as other themes.
One of the strong themes that I've seen was, for example, the water target.
The water target has been nearly untouched between CP 29 and CP 30.
There is not much of a difference.
For those who feel that is maybe too technical what I'm saying, now, my sincere apologies.
I don't want to become someone who to only their own choir.
But what I've learned from that is they convened themselves very nicely from the get go.
The water community is, I think, something we can really learn from where we basically can see how the negotiator took the science based evidence on from the water community because they became also part of the negotiation track and the negotiators team.
I think from our side, we might have not done that.
Because we might talk in echo chambers from the climate world and the urban world.
Look how big wolf is.
Then when I speak to my colleagues at UF TB, are you coming to wolf? They didn't even know what it is.
That's a real pity, but everyone knows what cop is.
Those two actors, really need to talk and I don't mean only the institution you have to pursue in habitat, I really mean the networks behind it.
I think this is our opportunity to look into, maybe we can transform the metadata sheet.
Maybe we can go back to member states and say, well, your two years of trying to pilot this weren't that successful.
Maybe it is feedback to then go and say, okay, these are the lessons learned, and this is maybe where we hopefully can reopen the discussion of what are these indicators in the first place.
I look forward to your challenging questions, and then I have, I guess, more ideas.
Thank you.
Thank you, Serene.
Alex, please your initial thoughts.
Let me just start by sharing evidence with you.
We have done a systematic literature review around the relationship between displacement, relocation, and the dimensions of vulnerability and exposure that are identified in the IPCC report and which drivers of risk that actually shapes adaptive capacities.
What we have seen is that systematically the literature is telling us that relocation increases vulnerability and exposure.
Yeah, in the context of environmental and physical dimension, it worsens housing and infrastructure conditions in terms of education.
Kids dropped out of school, they disrupt their educational pathways.
Economic, you lose your livelihoods, your economic networks are destroyed, that is so fundamental for those in the context of marginalized territories and places with poor infrastructure and opportunities, health and well being, It increased exposure to disease, loss of health infrastructure as well in terms of intersectionality, it particularly affects women, children, older people with disabilities, and people and people that have been already displaced before.
It's important to note that also people that goes through this experience of displacement, they don't just go through once in their lifetime.
They happen multiple times and all of those vulnerabilities are accumulative.
My point is there is no lack of evidence that demonstrates that such indicator to the goal of adaptation to measure our progress towards this goal that is not backed up by evidence.
It's an institute ID that we're utilizing evidence to try to inform policy making.
We try to systematize some of those evidence to try to support the case for it.
So what is our room for maneuver now to influence this outcome? As you say, we need to respect the institutional.
We might have critiques to how the decision was made.
But nevertheless, it has been made.
It's an imperfect system.
What is that? We know that now there is a two year period that we're going to be going through a process of piloting those indicators to see the extent to which it holds.
We also know that there is the opportunity for adapting or applying those indicators to particular realities and contexts.
So it's great, for example, to have colleagues here from the Brazilian national government because Brazil and other governments could say, Oh, actually, this doesn't apply to my reality and you can deprioritize an indicator that you feel is not in line with the context and the conditions of your particular country.
We need a concerted effort to systematically work with different countries to have the buy in that we will deprioritize.
We you explain to me this, we cannot take the indicator off, but we can deprioritize it.
I think that's a and we can during this period also suggest innovations that different countries can have.
I say, actually, for Brazil, we can try a different indicator that for us is more relevant.
Suddenly, if this is also happen, similar type of innovation in another country, we see another country and yet another country and we start seeing a coordinated effort of trying different indicator.
Again, we can start influencing in the end of these two years in the road to Adis.
We can say actually five, ten, 20 countries Oh, surprisingly, they use the same indicator to measure adaptationis.
We need, again, UN habitats, we need the coordination between civil society groups to build coalitions with governments and negotiators that are involved in this process to try to palette different indicators that we find it's more responsive.
This is a little story before Pass.
I think when the indicator came out, the first draft of it, we still in the last few days of CP, the two days.
The last two days.
My WhatsApp I woke up in the morning, my WhatsApp.
It was like emergency style.
I'm not going to name names.
People from UN habitats raised the issue.
But they were colleagues from civil society, people from ID that were in the room in the negotiation process, they said, what's going on here? This list came out and there were alterations and I would like to bring up also importance.
I know that Simono didn't in the screen, but I think we need to talk about the alterations to seven A, which is the proportion of settlement upgrading programs implemented that include climate change adaptation measures and maintain sustained engagement at the local level.
This is an alteration of an initial indicator that had locally led principles much more at the forefront of this indicator.
This is a diluted indicator in terms of community participation, which I think we need to also have a reflection about that.
The second one being also the one that was mentioned.
What we do we organized alternative framings, we submitted to negotiators in the negotiation rooms.
We know that UN Habitat also did their own lobbying.
We know that within the Brazilian government, there was lobbying.
The presidency received alternative formulations and all of that initially still didn't make absolutely any impact in the final documents.
It would be for transparency.
It would have been really important to understand at least some response why the submissions were not considered, why they didn't meet the criteria of the presidency to be able to be reflected in the final indicators.
We received zero response from any of those decisions.
I think there is an issue therefore us also to think not only in terms of alternative formulations, not only about trying new deprioritizations, we also need to push for transparency of how those decisions because this is going to happen again and we need to understand what's the criteria in which basis some of those decisions are taken in these processes.
Thanks so much, Alex, and now it's my pleasure to invite Klein for initial thoughts.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, first of all, to Lucas and Zimona for bringing us together and also, of course, to Enrique.
I Yeah, I was also thinking about starting with an anecdote because I wasn't in the lame, but a dear colleague of mine and I was also on the receiving end of getting messages from her and sharing how everyone was pretty surprised and worried about some of the indicators.
I'm very happy that we have the opportunity today at Wolf to do what we keep saying that we should bring the climate and the housing debate closer together because I think this is just an example of what happens if if this gap or this missing link still continues to exist.
So yeah, I'm happy to share some thoughts from, from a civil society organization.
And we also see a very urgent need to prevent that climate adaptation turns into a displacement agenda, like it was already flagged by my colleagues here.
And we see that risk with the current set of indicators to actually legitimize displacement, something that Mieria our partners all over the world were trying to fight against for very, very long time.
And yeah, we see a lot of evictions already taking place in the name of climate change, in the name of climate adaptation.
So this is a very timely and important discussion.
And, you've heard already a lot about the indicators and how problematic they are.
So what we wanted to share today is, um, yeah, in a way, thoughts or, um, initial ideas that we discussed with partners and also among, um, allies all over the world yet to have some alternatives or also think about what do we do if relocation is unavoidable? Because I think we still have to talk about this issue, and of course, for Miso and our partners, it needs to be human rights based, which might seem trivial to people here in the room, but I think it's very important to continuously stress that whatever we do needs to follow human rights.
And for us, I mean, it's also kind of obvious.
It starts with the last resort principle.
So we can only think about relocation if all other alternatives have been exhausted.
And we don't see that being safeguarded right now with the current set of indicators.
Another principle for us, which is very important, um, which might sound familiar to those of you who also work with indigenous peoples.
I think it is applicable also to these contexts is the free period and informed consent principle.
Communities must be fully informed and able to freely decide and meaningful be involved throughout the whole process.
And also very closely linked to that and a concept that one of our partner organization is trying to push globally is the right to the city.
So we really need to prioritize in city relocation if relocation is unavoidable, to maintain access to livelihoods and social networks.
And also, if relocation is unavoidable, we really need to ensure adequate housing.
So it needs to be in improved living conditions with secure tenure and access to basic services.
And with that, or closely linked to that is also livelihood protection.
So safeguard and, um and income sources and economic opportunities need to be ensured.
Also, social cohesion is a very important principle that needs to be tied to any relocation process to preserve community support structures, and avoid fragmentation.
And also, in the field of finance and long term support, we really need to ensure sustained funding and monitoring and social support beyond the process of relocations itself.
And, um in the same regard, accountability and remedy as very important principles to guarantee transparency, what we've heard before, and access to justice and complaint mechanisms if something went wrong during the relocation process.
And I think this also is very closely linked to the climate justice framework.
So there is already a lot that we can link to And, yeah, lastly, something that we have been also discussing before is to recognize relocation as part of loss and damage to ensure access to funding and compensation and also international support and political attention for this issue.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Jacqueline.
I would go for a second round.
I don't know if those are provocative questions because you are already reflecting on those issues, but it's important to share with our participants also some concerns.
First of all, I would provoke you about the safeguards.
In terms of forced evictions or involuntary displacements, we already have a framework in the UN that tells us procedures, how to do it.
In some cases, it's in that you cannot avoid evictions, for example, but forced eviction is not the same of, for example, taking a family from a high risk area to a better place.
The family can agree, the family can have its rights guaranteed, for example.
Going back 30 years ago, we already had the general comment number seven from the economic and social and cultural rights committee from the UN that talks about procedures when it comes to evictions.
In the previous years, also the General Assembly had a resolution.
The Human Rights Committee also had a resolution, I think five or four years ago recognizing the healthy environment as human right, for example, we already have a framework.
By provoking about safeguards, I also want to ask you about policy coherence.
How can national or local governments apply those measures, adaptation measures, guarantee policy coherence and respecting these previous framework that we already have in the UN, but also in national legislation.
Many countries have national legislations that guarantee fundamental rights for those families.
A second question is about the alternatives.
So, What are the alternatives to relocation being a global adaptation indicator? Can we deal with this indicator like Alex said, No, let's deprioritize it.
Let's deal with relocation as a loss and damage measure.
For example, is a better way to put this measure as a loss and damage measure or not? Finally, how can indicators, the DJ indicators better capture not only the processes, but the real outcomes that we want to.
You read, Alex, the initial proposal for the indicator.
The idea was to have a better level of resilience for communities.
The initial idea was not making national governments or local governments to take families from those territories to other territories.
How can we also better capture the outcomes, not necessarily the processes? I would add a fourthon.
You can pick anyone.
You don't need to answer all the questions.
Pick anyone you prefer.
It's about how Brazilian civil society and Brazilian government last year also tried to push in the negotiations about the indicators, the real necessity to have disaggregated data about that because we need to know who are the families that are impacted.
Are they, for example, a led by women.
Are they Afro descendant families? Are they indigenous families? Because when you don't have this disaggregated data, you just have a number.
1,000 families were displaced, but who are those people in terms of racial identity, in terms of gender, in terms of other characteristics.
I think these four or four questions are important for us to reflect and please be free to comment on anyone you prefer.
Not an easy task.
I have to start.
I'll pick a few of them, I promise.
One is the policy cohesion.
What I liked was when the IPCC started to revise their risk framework and not only look at risk as such based on weather events, but actually look more on the climate resilient development concept and integrating risk as encompass of human and ecological systems and under that the components were hazard, exposure, and vulnerability.
What that thinking and for some, again, please bear with me when this is too much climate talk, but what that actually meant was or for me it means is, it's not only the climate rationale that matters to define your risk and saying how it then informs any adaptation measure, it actually means you look at a multi layered version of vulnerability, you would look at what are your pressure points because of demographic.
You would look at how are societies within an infrastructure, for example, as a city.
You look at systems.
You don't look at a weather event and say, This is the flood risk.
That flood risk leads to following exposure, that exposures, that flood risk leads to falling hazard, which is the flood.
It leads to following exposure, and then you have the vulnerability.
It actually may allow us to include that element of ecological and human systems behind them.
I think that is such a shift we should have had ten years ago, but now that it is at least there, it allows it also for much more policy cohesion.
That's the one that you mentioned at the beginning.
Because what I have missed in the indicators from the 159, you have, for example, indicators in water where we have basic services or water resilient infrastructure that could have been easily linked to human settlements and infrastructure as well.
We don't talk to each other.
It's like there's that one theme and we run with it and it has been successful.
Maybe they didn't even want to bring in any other themes, especially not if it risks the political weight that they had behind the water theme.
I can only imagine and on vice versa, there are themes on ecology and biodiversity and so on.
We could have just cross linked.
I would have been, I guess, super happy to have no human settlements and infrastructure target as long as it's integrated.
I mean, I can't imagine, but maybe I'm also too biased from your habitat, but I can't imagine a life where people live that is not with human settlements and infrastructure.
I don't know if you can imagine that then you please tell me after the session.
But as it is so integrated, why having it not integrated across the different themes? That counts also vice versa.
He could have been more integrated into other themes as well.
We haven't done that exercise and I remember very clearly that was the SB last year where they allowed the experts to come together because the experts have worked only in their themes and they allowed them to come there's no funding for it, there's no mandate for it, so we don't do it.
Then we got the allowance from habitats executive director to make a statement during the SPs and say to the global goal on adaptation dialogue or however they called it and forgot to say, Well, you know what? We're going to host you.
We're going to give you the room, we're going to give you the tickets, and we're flying in and we try to be all of your sponsors and see who can sponsor.
So the network came together.
The what was 78 different experts that been nominated by their countries and by the UNF TAC process and that made them work together across, but of course, this was only one workshop out of eight that they have.
I think that hasn't happened, but it could have been much more and that would have ensured also better policy coherence, as well as I do believe that as the NDCs are updated under the ratchet mechanism every five years, we have an opportunity to also increase there the policy coherence to our national policies, our master plans, our development plans, our plans for DRR, I mean, these are things that they're not silo, they're just working towards each other.
So I feel like we update the policy that's the most sexist to be frank.
I think whatever political weight is behind that, I go with it.
I'm fine.
As long as you said, we break down the silo, we bring the policy coherence in.
The second question you had is, what is an alternative to relocation? For me, it's like, What is not an alternative to relocation.
It's like there's so many things you can do before you go into relocation and I fully agree, yes, Ulti Maraio as you mentioned as a principle, is one triggers at some point, it is impossible to live in areas that are unfortunately devastated by cyclones, devastated by sainzation and so on.
It's absolutely true.
It's not that we want to completely say that relocation is a taboo.
But I think there are so many means before you do relocation.
We have a huge adaptation portfolio in your habitat where most of our actions are based on resilient infrastructure and resilient settlements, and it starts from re establishing water gates to, um, to our reforestation of mangroves, to, um, to creating buffer zones throughout to nature based solutions, through park pockets, to reduce heat stresses.
There are so many other ways you can do before it goes to relocation.
I'm sure my colleagues will have even more there to say.
Then how to better capture not only the process, but the outcome we want.
I think as I'm unfortunately also a lawyer, Yeah, I know you said it.
I just close here one thing.
The UNFAC has its rules and procedures.
Within the rules and procedures, it's been developed to be intergovernmental.
If they don't have a mandate that allows them to integrate observers and their opinions, That's it.
We can't even be considered.
Then it is literally just corridor talks and relationships and talking to negotiators and so on to make them aware of your position.
There's just no mandate or nothing binds a negotiator to go to a community and actually say, Hey, by the way, what is actually adaptation success for you or what would you need to reduce your risk to a certain climate scenario? None of them have that as a mandate.
I do believe that bringing negotiators to a to the front line sometimes really helps and bringing them to even workshops where they are talking to communities that they understand it's reciprocal.
You have been given a huge responsibility to negotiate for your country for the best of your people.
The best of your people means you have to talk to your people, what is the best.
That often might not happen also because of limited time or limited resources or whatever it is, but I think we can't address these things just from a scientifical background.
I think it needs to be negotiated not only based on political interests, it has to be negotiated with communities in mind.
The locally led adaptation principles have been mentioned as well, the aid giving you a perfect guideline on how to actually do this to consider that in your negotiation.
That's the responsibility of a negotiator and that's the mandate given by the rules and procedures of the UNF TAC.
It's not the fault of the UNF TAC to be intransparent.
I would even defend that to that way because they have been given a mandate to serve the parties of the UNF TAC.
So they don't have even a mandate to be open and transparent to the observers or the nominated expert or outsiders.
This is unfortunate because we have, I guess, sweated and given so much blood to it.
But on the other side, unfortunately, that is the wrong tree to bark at on one side as they are bound by their rules and procedure.
We can go back to our national governments and basically create the conversation there.
I do believe ID is leading on a task force there to bring that together and give those interchange between negotiators and experts a room and I'm really grateful for that.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
It's not me doing that work.
I wish I have wonderful colleagues doing that.
ID is supporting the chair of the least developed countries in the negotiation spaces.
What they do is that they have been building the capacity of those negotiators because you can imagine a negotiator from a very well resourced country would come with a lot of information, data, support, and then you have often this negotiator is paid to do that job.
In other countries where the negotiator doesn't have the same level of experience, the same level of understanding of the environment within which it's operating.
It's not paid.
It's voluntary at times.
So it's extremely uneven landscape of negotiation.
Let's start from that basis.
Is an organization try to support that.
And I think it's an extremely important role to play to try to create a little bit more of an even playing ground.
And I think maybe some of the outcomes that we are seeing is because of that.
So I think there is a um, an issue here of how do we work with the negotiators, when you're talking about policy coherence, at times, I feel that some of those indicators are nearly thinking about states of exceptions.
Oh, we have massive things that happens and suddenly we need to do something about it.
What can we do? As if you then can disregard all the apparatus that are in place and all the fundamentals of human rights, international law that could clearly some of those things are in, you know, it's in the opposition of that.
You know, it's not only that it's not aligned to it, but it's actually can have as you were mentioning in the beginning, it can have an impact of violation of of those rights.
So I think the only The reasoning that I see of the lack of that alignment is because there is a perception of this state of exception that we can do things that we wouldn't be doing otherwise.
But we know that the impacts of climate change is not a one off thing.
It's not just when there's a huge flood, when there's a big rain, when there's landslide.
It's in everyday life.
It happens in a cumulative way every people's everyday lives.
We need to to approach climate change in this way, to be able to bring the normativity that already exists in international human rights frameworks, as you were mentioning, to be applicable in the adaptation responses.
I think there is a mindset change that is needed.
That's one.
I think we need to be much better as a community to communicate to negotiators, to policymakers this nexus between housing rights and adaptation.
I've been for the last since COP immersing myself in this literature, and I tell you, it is very flawed.
I mean, it just is not clear.
People say different things.
There is lack of coherence.
So that we need to be able to communicate what is this relationship between housing and adaptation.
Now we can use the language you already mentioned, incremental adaptation, vis-à-vis transformative adaptation.
We know that, most of the conversation in the relation between housing and adaptation stays within the incremental adaptation discussion.
It's about the physical infrastructure that you can do a better roof to be more resilient to the rain, to be able to have the walls, and it's very physical oriented.
It's not talking about the housing system and how the housing system itself is reducing our capacity to respond to climate change.
And that is where we would move into a transformative adaptation.
Of course, the indicators here are not talking at all about the characteristics of the housing system that makes even harder to generate transformative adaptation responses.
I think that's one when we've been thinking about the limits of adaptation.
We know there are soft limits and there are hard limits of adaptation.
All of this terminology is already out there in IPCC.
We know that soft limits are those limits that are generated because the socioeconomic conditions that are shaped around those situations creates that limit.
There are ways of addressing that limit of adaptation by improving the socioeconomic condition.
What does that mean? In a housing intervention.
How do we do that? Then there would be the hard limits of adaptation, and that's when then we can also start getting into loss and damage when there are situations that really we cannot adapt.
I do believe I think we need to continue that separation if we don't have a clarity around what is incremental transformative adaptation in the context of housing, then the discussion around the limits of adaptation becomes very complicated because then it's very difficult to decide then when we are entering a loss and damage conversation.
All of that is an integrated conversation, and then we get into mad adaptation.
So many different housing responses actually end up into ma adaptation and leading to situations that we're doing.
In short, I think that some if we were to reorient the definition, the definition that we proposed in that two days is one that really focused not on the relocation, but the proportion of infrastructure and human settlements vulnerable to climate related hazards and other extreme events for which strategies for risk prevention and mitigation have been developed and implemented.
So I think if you see how many human settlements and infrastructure have had plans and interventions that reduces risk, that prevents risks, that mitigates risk, doesn't take away the option of relocation when we hit that hard limits.
But I think that at least doesn't preclude what is the response that we're going to have.
Then I think why not think also of countries that might want to include island more uh, maybe provocative definition around the topic of the limit of adaptation.
Why not start thinking that percentage of decisions concerning the limits of climate change adaptation in housing and human settments that are through processes of meaningful participation involving civil society organizations and populations directly affected, adhering to UN principles of reparation.
So why not start thinking of looking at when we were discussing the previous session, when we had the decision that relocation was inevitable, to what extent are those decisions actually been adhering to principles of reparation that actually can be a guideline through which and all the other conventions that you have mentioned, making references that when it has happened, is it in line with what is the context, the normative context that regulates those procedures.
That could be way to start thinking of some safeguards that can help in creating some room for maneuver for us to hold governments to account when the discussion of relocation starts permeating the agenda.
Thank you.
Yeah.
A lot has been already said and flagged by my colleagues, but I think for us as a civil society organization, with partner organizations all over the world, with a lot of communities who are already experiencing these conditions, what we really like to see is to have a set of indicators that focus on how people can stay safely and prioritizing upgrading tenure and access to service and community participation.
And I think this is also key to capture the outcomes that we want to see to have a focus on experience changes in living conditions and also livelihoods, tenure, security and well being, And, yeah, right now, we don't see that.
We see quantified or quantified indicators that focus on these processes and not on the outcome.
But we also think that we have a very good window now, like also what was also stressed before.
And, um, Yeah, I think there is also some hope and some opportunity here to maybe through this specific case, really show how both climate and housing discourse can benefit from each other and really make a change for people's lives.
Thank you so much.
Right now, we still have minutes, fortunately, I would like to open the floor for those of you who want to share your experience or make a question, make a comment, please be free.
Sama, we have mics.
Hi, I'm Samuel Suleiman from the Ministry of Cities Brazil.
Thanks so much for this panel after I was there, and I think this discussion is really important because we are discussing slogan, but a mission that you are defending in national Secretary of peripheries, remove the risk, not the people.
The displacement we try not put an option.
Sometimes the local government use this for the people from this area and use the area for another, interesting.
It is really complicated.
Of course, the infrastructure is hard to do to upgrading in C two and everything.
But I think it's important to discuss indicators.
Yesterday was discussed with Ana Claudia, how the Urban forum can be a moment to monitoring what we are doing about urban agenda and what we are advancing.
More than the indicator that are discussed, I think you need more discussion and understand the conflicts when you discuss informal settlements and risk is measures to keep the human rights on the board, of course.
But the question, how can you produce indicators for the Urban Forum for this monitoring, what they are doing in different countries, what you are advancing in each forum.
I think it's important perspective.
I'm thinking about that too.
I don't know if a second question in the first presentation, she brings us the How can the progress from Copy 28, 29 and 30 last year in Brazil, we have a lot of action acceleration planning plans.
I came to forum to share when we are discussing sustainable and equate peripheries against environmental racism.
I think it was a wonderful propose to think about this plan, but I don't know if you have the continues in this next Copy 31.
How can you feel about that? Because in here in this forum, we are discussing the connection with urban agenda with climate agenda.
What do you think about that? You can amplify inside the photoum and take more space into the next cop and bring the informal settlements and the urban agenda into the climate discussion.
I don't know if you have answers, but I want to think it together about decators for the urban forum and the urban agenda inside the climate discussion.
That's it.
Great.
Thank you so much, Sama.
I also would like to highlight that the Secretary of Peripheres of Brazil has a wonderful program called Green Resilient Peripheries, in which we are partnering with several civil society organizations trying to apply nature based solutions on the community level with community participation.
It's exactly what Samuel said.
Displacements are not an option for this program.
We are trying to keep the communities there and intensify the solutions with the communities.
Thank you for putting those questions because they are really important about the processes.
What can we bring from Wolf to next CP, and then again to Wolf and to Cop 32 because this debate is going through Istanbul this year, but it will go to Adis Ababa in Cop 32 as well.
The floor is still open if anyone else wants to share, share a comment or a question.
Don't be shy.
Do Larry, please.
It's actually heartening to see a lot of action happening in Brazil.
I think in India, back home, still a lot of the conversations with informal settlements is still limited to legal and illegal.
While I know these challenges exist across the globe, but I think we have graver challenges facing back home.
One of the important questions that Madam has raised is regarding how we can link these conversations in both to negotiation spaces.
I think that this was a conversation that we were having in a panel previously when we were talking about green evictions.
How can we ensure that the globe, like the GGA indicators, global colon adaptation, are not, I would say, measures that put developing countries or countries in the global South further marginalized or doesn't put pressure on them to respond to these indicators and quantify, that is the challenge, I think that communities are not able to access the funds that exist in the adaptation and these indicators should not be one of these barriers for them to do so even not just communities, but also national and state level government.
I just wanted to understand that perspective.
Thank you so much, Delri.
Anyone else? So yes, Alas participation, great.
Thank you very much.
My name is Eva ****, also from Miao as my colleague on the panel.
Not just a brief idea.
We talked about the importance of bringing the urban community and the climate community together and I totally second this.
We talked about wolf being an opportunity, which is certainly true.
I was thinking, since you and habitat also started the open ended intergovernmental expert group on housing, this would certainly also be an opportunity to really, um, Yeah, put in the discussion on the global golden adaptation and the indicators.
As in this working group, we are discussing about the housing monitoring framework.
This is really very much on the agenda in the open ended working group on housing.
I see this as a very important opportunity and moment.
Thank you.
Thank you, Evan.
Coming back to you, maybe we can rotate starting with Jacqueline for final comments, then I'll call Lucas Turmana for our takeaways.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Something that we've been also thinking about to make this link, of course, between Wolf and the next cop, there will be also the subsidiary buddies and Bond.
This is also a space where we want to continue the conversation.
But I or what we at Missio and also with partners, we're also thinking about, this is, of course, now the housing community perspective.
But I would be also super curious to bring even more perspectives because I'm pretty sure the people from the health community might have some some comments on the current set of indicators to also capture the interlinkages between the different sectors and maybe also to, I mean, the climate discourse, of course, and also the attraction of CP and the climate conferences is, of course, a different one than the one we are here right now at.
But still, I think we might get also Yeah, become a bigger group of people trying to bring in different perspectives also to the climate debate.
So this was also something that we had in mind, yeah, to open it up and ask all the others that are also interested in the GGA out of their different perspectives.
So yeah, I'm very much looking forward to continue that discussion, as I said, also at the SSBs in Bonn.
Yeah, I'm going to come at a slightly different angle and share some total frustration.
I think I've been spending a lot of time trying to understand these different spaces.
In the housing space, I think we were quite safe.
We had a habitat agenda, we knew what we were focusing on.
So we were coordinated.
We were complaining that we were not anywhere else, but at least we knew what we were doing, and what we were targeting.
And then for now we kind of advocated for housing start to have its own intergovernmental space, for it to be integrated into C, and that pushed us as civil society to then start saying, we need to engage with the spaces and we need to understand the spaces.
And then more and more, we started realizing they don't talk to each other, they' there is no coordination.
They are parallel processes.
We don't know if we're pushing here, if that's actually have an impact there.
There's a whole relationship with also the Special Rapporteur in the International Court of Human Rights and also the developments there around the element of the right to adequate housing that involves issues of sustainability and if we're going to advance in that direction.
I'm just putting out there to you that even for a a person, that is, I would consider myself educated person that I have done a PhD, that I have a salary, I'm paid to try to do some of this stuff, and I still don't it's difficult to work it out, right? So how on how are we expected civil society to really have a meaningful role in trying to engage meaningfully in those discussions.
So I do feel we need some sort of coordination, some sort of device that tries to at least bring these different housing touches on give a compass to how housing can be integrated into different multilateral systems that helps engagement from civil society, but also from governments to be fair, that also feel, am I in this intergovernmental ministerial process or am I in this other one? How do they put different hats? I feel we do need a some sort of coordination around the housing that would help us to do the coordination that we're talking about to connect the dots and help us to navigate and to say, actually, no, you are a human rights organization, maybe you focus on that one and we divide the work in ways that allows us to at least be manageable because also on the other hand, when I look at my colleagues that do climate diplomacy, I do climate diplomacy on just transition, on loss and damage, they have a specific and we haven't in the housing sector started to develop that type of specializations of housing diplomacy to be able to allow us to then have meaningful engagement into the multiplication of spaces to be fair, may be a result of our success, to be able to have a meaningful influence in those different spaces.
I think We need to also think how that meaningful interaction happens so that in situations like this, we don't find ourselves late into the process and actually not being able to affect the process as much as we think we could have had to have a meaningful outcome out of it.
I think there's a concerted effort that we need to think as a collective to help in navigating the complexity of the system that is unfolding in front of us.
Thank you very much.
It's lovely to be at the end.
I can only add because my smart speakers have already said so many good things.
I talk a little bit of the perspective with your habitat, trying to actually really engage in that space.
I would say the shift was made at COP 26 in Glasgow and was the first time we actually came together and said, Look, we're noticing that who was invited to cops from a governmental level is, of course, Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, not necessarily the urban line ministries to habitat.
So we thought, what is needed to bring those actors to the cop process? Then Cop 27 was the first one of a ministerial meeting on urbanization and climate change.
You had so many urban ministers there.
When I say urban, there is actually no such thing as an urban ministry.
As you all know in some parts, it's called a local government ministry or local devolution, part of a devolution ministry, in other words, it is called a transport ministry, another it's a housing ministry, another is the climate change and housing.
It is not as coherent as the Ministry of Environment.
And so we have brought in the line ministries to habitat, which are there is a whole governance system behind it.
And so that gave us a bit of the idea of how to bring two different governance system, habitat and FBC closer together.
And so with those ministerial meetings, you had all of a sudden, people at the table that not only brought their ministerial heads, but actually as we were not bound in those ministerial meetings by intergovernmental rules, we could also bring in the local government counterpart.
We asked ministers, let's say, Minister of local regional development or local regional government.
We asked them, please bring to your statement your local government and all of a sudden you had mayors there and you have city governors there, you had all of these local representatives in the same room and they have then talked about climate aspects and they've brought that up front forward into the climate discourse.
It took us so long from CP 27 to last year's CP, we've grown bigger and bigger in our ministerial meetings.
It's such a success story.
We now need to see how do we bring the outcome, the declaration of ministerial meetings into the next level, which is UNF WACs rules and procedures.
Because until and unless the outcomes are not part of the agenda of the UNF WAC, it will not be considered.
Which is beautiful, you have the CP presidency as a body of the cop You have them being your chair of your ministerial meeting, which is super helpful.
But it doesn't automatically mean that the substance of the ministerial meeting is integrated into the UNF twentyPC process.
This is a different type of body.
It's all within the rules and procedure indeed, but what the UNF twentyBC does and what they're mandated to do has nothing to do with what the CP presidency does.
The CP is the overhead chair, but it has its own agenda.
I think that is important to understand to realize where can you actually penetrate that system and where you can't.
A Cop 30, we had, for example, the president of the Unhabitat Assembly together with the CP presidency saying, let's bring these processes together and have a call for this with the UFC and bring actually rules and procedures of both sides closer together.
This will take time, 100%.
It took us already from Glasgow to, I would say the first success was Egypt.
That was a year to push and push for a ministerial meeting.
But it was not easy to push for multi level governance at the beginning.
I'm so happy that now when we talk about multi level governance, it's not anymore such a construct for that rules and procedures under UNF TAC.
It is much more accepted and we have buying from the cop presidencies, the older ones that followed since Glasgow and we hopefully will have that also in the upcoming Cp 31.
But still what is, of course, missing, we don't have an action for multi level governance in any of the agenda.
I remember so well when we had our negotiations for the framework, the resilience framework, the UAE framework.
There was this one outcome or one language in there for, um, I hope I get it correctly together for multi level and cooperative action.
Then on day 12 of COP, it was taken out and the entire community was like, this was the one thing where you asked for mule governance and you gave us this tiny tiny mandate and then it was kicked out.
It was gone.
I think these are the conversations and the fights unfortunately to make.
But often enough, one minister actually can talk to the other minister to bridge the conversations much better than I mean, we as network already are coming together, which is beautiful.
But then to really go into the nitty gritty of the UNF to PCs, it means that the negotiators have to talk, maybe even to the negotiators of the OE open ended working group for housing.
I would love that actually to bring them together and have them thinking about, as you said, the habitat agenda and everything that's out there.
Often enough, I have this feeling that the negotiators would not know what their countries all have ratified and not consider that because they're coming from an environmental perspective and that holistic approach of what other agreements they have ratified is maybe not always up at the forefront because yes, human rights, I think that is something they will know about if they know really the details of the habitat agenda, I would love to make a pop quiz out of that.
Thank you.
Thank you all, Jacqueline, Alex, and Serene, for being here with us.
I would like to invite Lucas Truman from the UN University for our takeaways and next steps.
Maybe, Lucas, what are we going to do after this session for the next five years? Please tell us.
Well, very complicated task.
Also, the task was very complicated in January, I think, to bring some takeaways, also because I think I could keep listening to these bright minds a little while still and think about some ways forward.
Um Yes.
I think that was very present in most of the discussions, I think that emerged very repeatedly in all the different contributions was first the idea that adaptation really goes beyond infrastructure, really goes beyond the technical infrastructure that is needed in these settlements.
So it's really about going beyond the technocratic definition of what is risk or how risk is defined that goes beyond exposure to the risk itself, to hazards itself, to include some words that were repeated here related to dignity, housing rights, housing tenure, agency participation.
All of these is also part of what adaptation means in the end and it's not being captured in the indicators.
Still, I think it's important to highlight that we're entering a very important phase of the global discussion on adaptation because for the first time, we have a set of indicators that can capture the progress, the advance that we're doing globally in this topic.
Obviously, by the very same nature of the task, it's Herculean task because risk disasters, it's something that is intrinsically lo expresses locally.
Coming up with a generalized indicator for that obviously will bring some challenges.
But I think it's also very important what Serene was mentioning.
We as part of the UN system.
We have to respect also the process of deliberation, the multilateral process that we're building through these different spaces.
And we have some windows of opportunity to still add some safeguards at some criteria that make this set of indicators to work better to really translate the outcomes that we want to see.
Not necessarily the administrative procedures, the measures used to reduce vulnerability, but really the outcomes.
The impacts on living conditions, the impacts on dignity, the increased agency of communities as a result of adaptation.
Another very important point that was highlighted several times, I think, throughout this discussion is the disconnection between the different spaces, the different stakeholders are connected to this set of indicators.
Not only this disconnection between the housing sector, climate sector, but it was also highlighted.
Even within these sectors, we have now seven different clusters, eight different clusters of indicators that not necessarily are building together a proposal for, uh, this global stock take of the progress on adaptation.
Yeah, today's discussion also highlighted several other key tensions.
I think it was quite interesting.
Also that Alex brought the literature review on the impact of relocations, the impact of evictions.
They are usually negative to the communities.
These really should raise some concerns about how the tax is framed so far.
Um Yeah.
Beyond that, I think it's also important for us not to be the devil advocate, but it's important to have this very clear notion that we're not talking about relocation as something intrinsically harmful.
In some cases when hard limits of adaptation are really met, this might be the only solution, but what we're talking about here is really including, um, referencing back to the safeguards that are already existing in the discussions of housing, referencing back to some principles that we also discussed here, being voluntary relocations or even other principles that Jacqueline, for example, mentioned on adopting human rights based approaches or free prior and informed consent in this process of relocation.
So we can avoid transferring an environmental risk to a social, economic, political risk and really address the risk itself.
It really highlights the need to balance these needs between relocation, between investment zone insu upgrading, how this picture, how this appears in the different indicators.
That was also flagged how these disappeared from the text in the last copy because it was already present in many of the indicators that were listed before, the long list of almost 10,000 indicators.
This was a frequent topic, but in the final adoption, it didn't, uh, become so clear.
So these really lead us to think about the way forward, what we can think about as measures that we can take next.
I think that we have a very important window now that was also highlighted here.
It's the moment to really think about the methodological development of these indicators.
So really think about the metadata, the information, the data, the contextual information that defines what these indicators are and how they are implemented, how they are followed.
And contribute to contribute to this, we have several spaces.
Some of them were already mentioned, but the whole idea of even having this one you session, I think it's a little start for that.
I mean, this is the idea of cross ponizing the different agencies, but also generating the evidence, the needed information to inform the discussions.
As these are just around the corner now, in a month.
The idea is also to provide some technical guidance information to policymakers, negotiators, even community representatives that are involved in the discussion at this opportunity and also open this invitation to other organizations, organizations that are focused on this nexus between climate and housing or even beyond that, as was mentioned, to gather this evidence, alternatives and inform the process.
I was even discussing with Zimone before the panel discussion here that we should also have a one UN session at COP having more or less the same configuration and bringing UNF triple C more consistently to the discussion.
I think this is also a very important, question for us to solve now how we can also not only go to the spaces of climate debate, but also bring climate debate to this space here.
And yeah, with this, consider really having a technical brief or technical information to inform the discussions that we have in the next step.
Considering this not as necessarily a missed opportunity just because the indicators were adopted, but really seeing the opportunity of having this one year and a half until addisbaba as the time that we have to make these indicators work to really follow.
To really address vulnerability.
With this in mind, I just would like to thank the contributions.
I also learned a lot during this panel.
It was great to hear from you.
Again, just reinforce the invitation to gather contributions from other organizations, from governments, from civil society organizations to gather this evidence into the SPs and beyond.
I would like to thank you very much for present in the session and wish you a great enough today and a great enough proof in the next day.
So thank you.