Thank you very much.
Thank you, Catherine. I think you set the transition very well for our audience here.
I am going to be speaking on behalf of the International Development Research Centre, which is a crown corporation within the portfolio of the Minister of International Development.
IDRC funds research in developing countries to promote sustainable and inclusive growth, to reduce poverty, and to produce evidence and innovations for large-scale positive change in people's lives and livelihoods.
Specifically today, I'm going to be speaking about how we are developing knowledge that helps build the resilience of the most vulnerable people in the developing world, by strengthening capacities of developing countries to tackle climate change, partnering with other agencies for greater impact and bringing that knowledge to a global scale for effective climate action.
We work in partnership with local organizations to strengthen developing country capabilities to conduct research and to use research results to inform decision-making. For example, with Global Affairs Canada, IDRC funds the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, where graduate-level training is helping to build a critical mass of mathematical scientists to contribute to climate change solutions for Africa.
Climate change is a global problem as we've heard and it requires efforts on many fronts. Certainly innovations and policy are required to reduce emissions, and we've heard already some statements to that effect. Our focus is on reducing the impact of climate change on the world's vulnerable people in developing regions. This is where we focus the research and the innovation.
In alignment with Canada's international assistance policy, our goal is to ensure that climate action helps people and businesses in developing regions become more resilient in smart, innovative and evidence-based ways, and that actions undertaken by those countries reach everyone, including women and girls and other vulnerable groups.
I'll give you an example. The arid Tensift valley in Morocco is prone to erosion and floods due to the increased intensity of rainfall and deforestation. Two-thirds of the population in this region live in small towns and rural areas. It's quite poor. The water supply there, given the arid climate, is inadequate to satisfy the growing needs of the population. Women in this region are often secluded and economically dependent on the men in their families, and therefore, they're not usually involved in decision-making.
Moroccan and Canadian experts worked together to improve local watershed management by improving small dams to control water flow and water supply, planting trees to stabilize groundwater supply, and developing methods to include women in decision-making around water management.
Some of the women who were included in this project got together to innovate their own early warning system for flooding. They created a Facebook group to warn their neighbours downstream that there might be a flood coming. This may seem like a small thing, but this action had major repercussions in reducing the impacts of flooding downstream and permitted these women to become more empowered as agents of change in their communities. This had knock-on effects in the community. Women in this Facebook group were then able to spin off small business opportunities related to their adaptation efforts in the valley.
The point I want to make is that where people live, and their exposure to flooding, storms and droughts, influences their vulnerability, but social factors such as poverty, lack of education, gender inequality and so on also play roles in their vulnerability to climate change. In IDRC's 12 years of working on climate change in developing regions, we've found that climate action must address these underlying social factors as well as reduce that exposure to climate threats.
In partnership with agencies and departments in Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands, IDRC has invested more than $250 million in climate change research, funding 160 research projects and more than 1,000 researchers in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. This represents one of the largest global commitments made by any organization into adaptation research to inform decisions in the developing world.
Partnership is a key dimension of our strategy to achieve greater impact. For example, a partnership with the U.K. through a flagship program, the collaborative adaptation research initiative in Africa and Asia, seeks to increase resilience in climate hot spots. These are locations that disproportionately feel the effects of climate change, such as coastal deltas, mountain regions and drylands.
The program has piloted new options, including flood-resistant housing and new sanitation approaches, and has contributed to national climate change adaptation plans in 11 countries. The programs' findings were cited in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's special report on 1.5 degrees of warming.
In a second example of partnership, last week the Prime Minister announced that Canada had joined the new Global Commission on Adaptation, which is co-convened with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and 15 other countries. The Global Commission on Adaptation is a high-level political forum overseen by former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and supported by Bill Gates. It seeks to accelerate climate adaptation action over the next two years.
As part of Canada's contribution, IDRC enriches the commission's expertise and experience by making sure that experts from Africa, Asia and Latin America are engaged in the commission. IDRC's prior research collaboration and working relationship with the Netherlands helped bring about this collaboration with the commission. It's a good example of what some might call “science diplomacy”. Through our working partnerships, IDRC is helping amplify Canada's voice.
There's a growing sense of urgency, as we've heard, for faster climate action globally, particularly in developing countries, because the impacts are already being felt there by many and because it threatens our ability to achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030.
Research and evidence on adaptation and resilience to climate change have to be focused on reaching as many people as possible and having a large-scale impact.
One concrete example of this is in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta. This is the area in Bangladesh where three great Asian rivers join the Indian Ocean. There are 57 million people living there. It's a 1.7 million square-kilometre area that is at great risk from the impacts of climate change. The efforts of the program I spoke of earlier help to inform Bangladesh's new national delta plan, which is a forward-looking development plan. The evidence and the tools and the long-term relationships between the researchers and the decision-makers in the planning commission help bring this about.
The plan now takes an adaptive management approach that will address the vulnerabilities to climate change and guide practical investment for the coming decades to ensure that the country is able to anticipate and be ready for more severe storms, saltwater intrusion in agricultural areas, heat waves and increasingly unpredictable monsoons.
We have many more examples like this—about 279 tested adaptation options that have been catalogued online in which practical research is informing climate action that is also contributing to sustainable development and to improving people's lives and livelihoods today. IDRC's value proposition is our commitment to addressing the critical challenges facing vulnerable populations by generating a strong evidence base for decision-making.
Canada's support to developing countries has positive spinoffs. Investing in solutions that help reduce vulnerability and stabilize communities to help in dealing with climate change means that fewer aid dollars may be spent downstream in humanitarian action. It also helps countries provide opportunities for people to thrive where they live and reduces the tendency for them to leave and migrate. Further, supporting such research means that scientists globally have a broader evidence base to draw from to inform decisions.
We are pleased to state that IDRC contributes to Canada's international leadership on climate change. We're reaching the most vulnerable people, strengthening capacities, doing it in partnership with others and catalyzing effective climate action. We can and should do more in the years ahead in order to enhance adaptive capacity, accelerate resilience and reduce the vulnerability, so that we can move towards achieving the SDGs.
Thank you for your attention.