Information for integrated Decision-Making & Participation

Integrated Decision-Making & Participation (IDMP) has rapidly emerged as a potent strategic tool for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a blueprint established by the United Nations for attaining global peace, prosperity, and protection of our planet. Fundamentally, IDMP weaves together diverse threads of information from a myriad of sources, fostering a collaborative environment that facilitates participatory decision-making. This comprehensive approach harnesses the power of information to drive robust, evidence-based strategies for sustainable development, thereby underpinning the realization of the 17 SDGs.

In the complex realm of sustainability, information forms the bedrock of any successful strategy. The more diverse and accurate the data, the better informed the strategies, and by extension, the more likely they are to succeed. IDMP, by centralizing the collection, analysis, and dissemination of relevant information, offers an efficient mechanism for transforming raw data into actionable intelligence. Decision-makers in governments, NGOs, or private sectors can therefore engage in efficient, informed policy-making, tailoring their strategies to local, regional, and global contexts.

Participation, on the other hand, infuses these data-driven decisions with a crucial human touch. It ensures that the voices of stakeholders at all levels – from grassroots communities to international organizations – are heard and factored into decision-making processes. This collaborative approach fosters a sense of ownership among stakeholders, facilitates the resolution of conflicts of interest, and ultimately, leads to more sustainable and acceptable outcomes.

The synergy of information and participation through IDMP directly contributes to the implementation of SDGs. Whether it's improving health and education (SDGs 3 and 4), promoting economic growth and decent work (SDGs 8 and 9), or tackling climate change (SDG 13), IDMP helps guide policy and practice towards sustainable outcomes by empowering stakeholders with the right information and ensuring their active participation in decision-making processes.

By mapping the intricate web of interdependencies between various SDGs, IDMP can also illuminate hidden opportunities for synergies and highlight potential pitfalls of trade-offs. The promotion of gender equality (SDG 5), for instance, not only stands as an objective in its own right but also catalyzes progress towards other SDGs such as quality education, reduced inequalities, and sustainable communities.

Droughts are extreme events that have major impacts on communities, ecosystems and economies due to slow onset and complex processes. Land and ecosystem degradation increase the risks of loss and damage during droughts, whereas well-adapted practices and policies can enable society to (re)build resilience. This review highlights actions needed to connect and fill gaps in the present systems for ecological and hydrological monitoring, governance, and alignment of economic incentives at regional, national and local scales.
The Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage has identified increasing temperatures as a key slow onset event. However, it is the resulting increases in short-term heat events — heatwaves — that have so far been the primary focus of risk assessment and policy, while gradual and sustained increases in temperature have received less attention. This is a global issue but particularly important in tropical and subtropical regions already chronically exposed to extreme heat.
Responding to climate change requires radical transformations in social, political, economic and social-ecological systems. Recent research has argued that individuals can drive transformations at scale through changes in beliefs and values that affect political activity. We draw from sociological and psychological perspectives on mental health outcomes among survivors of violence and abuse, taking a gendered approach, to show how potential for individual transformation is differentially constructed through personal life trajectories and intersectional social relations.
The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Oceans and the Cryosphere in a Changing Climate suggests sea level rise may be best understood as a slow onset disaster for Pacific Island countries and, in particular, low lying atoll nations. Sea-level rise, coastal flooding and surge inundation is an increasingly pressing problem across the urban Pacific.
Elsevier, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Volume 50, June 2021
The climate policy discourse on Loss and Damage has been considering options for averting, minimizing and addressing critical and increasingly systemic climate-related risks in vulnerable countries. Research has started to identify possible finance sources and mechanisms, but stopped short of positioning those options along a comprehensive risk management framework in line with the whole scope of Loss&Damage.
This review article assesses evidences published in the past two years on the links among slow-onset events, food security and poverty as well as the strategies focused on reducing specific problems, those implemented in the countries of the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. It is here, where slow-onset events related to Climate Change pose significant challenges intricately linked to poverty and food security; mainly as a result of a great economic and social dependence, strongly conditioned by environmental factors.
The negative effects of slow onset events (SOEs) related to climate change are already affecting developing countries, with the resulting impacts likely to increase significantly. With an increasing urgency to act on SOEs, this paper systematically reviewed and synthesized literature on SOEs in Southeast Asia (SEA), which is a region of several highly climate vulnerable countries.
Elsevier, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Volume 50, June 2021
Based on a systematic review of journal articles, books and book chapters, and policy papers, we evaluate possible sources of finance for addressing loss and damage from slow onset climate events in developing countries. We find that most publications explore insurance schemes which are not appropriate for most slow onset events. From this, we determine that only a few sources are sustainable. Levies and taxes are seen as relatively fair, predictable, adequate, transparent, and additional.
Elsevier, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Volume 50, June 2021
A growing scientific evidence reaffirms that slow onset climate events such as desertification, sea level rise and loss of biodiversity will place an increasing number of people at risk of poverty and social marginalization. Establishing national social protection systems aligned with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement could be a key policy approach to address increasing risks from long-term changes to the climate system.
Slow-onset events (SOE) such as sea level rise, desertification, salinisation, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity and forests or glacial retreat fall under loss and damage (L&D) from climate change impacts under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and are increasingly threatening the environment and people's livelihoods. Irreversible SOE are closely linked to non-economic losses (NEL) such as health, human mobility or loss of ecosystem services. Neither L&D from SOE nor NELs have a dedicated funding stream.

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