Page - 21 - in options, Volume summer 2021

The Green Climate Fund was established as part of the Paris Agreement to help developing countries mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change. One of the aims of the organization is to develop institutional capacities to deliver climate action agendas, which was the mandate of a recent consortium involving IIASA, Climate Analytics in Germany, and the Center for Clean Air Policy in the US. Together, the group delivered technical assistance to help nine developing countries, including Mexico and Nicaragua, better understand climate mitigation and adaptation issues. Efforts were focused on helping to build institutional capacity on climate strategies. Services offered by the consortium included climate finance and policy mapping, climate risk profile, macroeconomic impact analysis, and IIASA-led research on vulnerability assessments, greenhouse gas inventories, and energy systems modeling. Vulnerability assessments combined data from different models to calculate 14 indicators for scenarios of socioeconomic and climate change and to further understand to what extent the population and land area is exposed. The research shows how emissions mitigation and pursuing an agenda to reduce socioeconomic vulnerability would benefit these countries significantly. “This group has worked diligently to build capacity on mitigation and adaptation to climate change,” says IIASA researcher Edward Byers, who was one of five IIASA staff members involved in the project from 2019-2021. “In Mexico and Nicaragua, we worked directly with government agencies to assess climate vulnerabilities. This capacity building will help these countries target action to help the most vulnerable populations.” One of the biggest challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic has been accurate testing and detection rates of the virus. In fact, most countries detected only 60% or less of all infected cases by September 2020. IIASA researchers endeavored to bridge this gap. Led by Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz and coauthors from the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, the study analyzed the results from 3,000 likely parameter sets of an epidemiological model. The technique was applied to the US due to the country’s regional diversity and because the US accounted for almost a quarter of all global confirmed cases and deaths by September 2020. The model depends on the lethality of the virus and not contagiousness, which means more contagious mutations of the virus do not affect the results. The findings suggest that non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as social distancing and masks, have been key to containing the virus and preventing future waves. “The number of COVID-19 infections is key for accurately monitoring pandemics. A number of challenges, however, such as varied testing policies and availability, prevent accurate detection of all cases,” explains Fürnkranz- Prskawetz. “Previous studies aimed at reaching a more accurate number by retroactively assessing infections, but they are lacking in scope and often confined to a specific population subgroup. Our research combines the reported number of COVID-19 deaths with population data and case-fatality rates to indirectly estimate the fraction of people ever infected and the fraction of people detected among the infected.” Estimated fraction of people ever infected among the total population and fraction of people detected among the ever infected across states with stable case-fatality rates as of September 8, 2020. Getting a fuller picture of COVID-19 infections A M E R I C A S Understanding the impacts of climate change Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz: fuernkra@iiasa.ac.at Edward Byers: byers@iiasa.ac.at Further info: pure.iiasa.ac.at/17014 Regional impacts GCF: FINANCING CLIMATE ACTION There is a shrinking window of opportunity to address the climate crisis. Average global temperature is currently estimated to be 1.1°C above pre-industrial times. Based on existing trends, the world could cross the 1.5°C threshold within the next two decades and 2°C threshold early during the second half of the century. Limiting global warming to 1.5°C is still narrowly possible and will be determined by the investment decisions we make over the next decade. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) – a critical element of the historic Paris Agreement  – is the world’s largest climate fund, mandated to support developing countries raise and realise their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ambitions towards low emissions, climate-resilient pathways.OUR TRANSFORMATIVE APPROACH We achieve our goal by investing across four transitions – built environment; energy & industry; human security, livelihoods and wellbeing; and land-use, forests and ecosystems – and employing a four-pronged approach: by promoting integrated strategies, planning and policymaking to maximise the co-benefits between mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development. by investing in new technologies, business models, and practices to establish a proof of concept. Developing countries are already the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and are now also being hit the hardest by the economic crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. GCF is supporting countries to design and integrate climate resilient recovery measures into their NDCs. Policy, institutional, technological, business, and financial Innovation is critical to accelerate the transition to low emissions development pathways. For example, GCF is supporting the development of the first Caribbean regional green bond exchange in Jamaica. TRANSFORMATIONAL PLANNING AND PROGRAMMING: CATALYSING CLIMATE INNOVATION: © L .E lí a s / P ro fo n a n p e 21Optionswww.iiasa.ac.at Summer 2021