PLACEMENT REPORT
The Global Center on AdaptationGroningen, The Netherlands May 15th 2019- August 15th 2019
Estefanía Beltrán Dorantes S3878236
Drs. B.L. Aardema University of Groningen
Table of Contents
I. Introduction 3
II. Motivation 3
II. I Application procedure
III. Expectations before the placement 4
IV. About the Global Center on Adaptation 5 IV.I The Global Commission IV.II Young Leadership Program V. Assignment 7 VI. Suggestions for future students 11
VII. Conclusion 12
VIII. Future career plans 13
I. Introduction
I am currently studying the Master of International Security at the University of Groningen. For three months (15 May 2019- 15 August 2019), I had the possibility to collaborate and do an internship at The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) in Groningen, the Netherlands. The GCA is an international organisation focus on bringing adaptation solutions to climate change to the political agenda. I was part of the second generation of the Young Leaders Program. It was an invaluable experience and a learning process for me.
II. Motivation
Climate change is upon us, and its effects are getting more severe than ever before. Environmental hazards had already resulted in a wide range of impacts across every region of the world. Therefore, to create a more sustainable society, we need to join efforts. Furthermore, during my master program at the University of Groningen, I had the opportunity to follow the course: Environment, Geopolitics and the Human. This course was really important for me, because I developed an interest and a better understanding of climate change and its relationship with security, especially for disaster risk management, environmental migration and adaptation.
Furthermore, since the beginning of my career, I felt encouraged to generate a positive impact on my society. Therefore, applying for an internship at the GCA was a logical step for me, the organisation not only share the same values as me but also, they work hand in hand with governments, international organisations and key stakeholders. Thus,I thought that by joining their group of experts I would be able to make a real impact and calling on governments, communities and companies to take urgent action to bring new solutions to the climate change issue.
Also, when I was searching for a placement, I was looking for a company that was based in the Netherlands, because since I am already a foreign student, for me was convenient to move around the country rather than looking for new accommodation in another place. That also influenced my decision in applying to the GCA.
II.I Application procedure
To be able to apply for the internship, I needed to send my curriculum vitae, a motivation letter, a recommendation letter and hold an interview with the supervisor of the program. After one month since the moment I submitted my application, an email response was sent back to me, and in there the candidates can know if they were selected or not. This is a very competitive program, because for the period I applied, around 80 applications from all over the world were submitted, but only three students were chosen. In that sense, I was selected to be part of the second cohort of the Young Leaders Program, alongside with a colleague from Brazil and Indonesia, all of us students of the University of Groningen.
The start of my internship coincides with the last period of courses for my master's program. At the beginning it was difficult to cope with my homework and my internship. However, the flexibility that the GCA offered me allowed me to make it more doable. For instance, there we sometimes that I was able to work from home. Luckily the GCA´s offices in Groningen are located in the Energy Academy Building; therefore, I was close to the university´s library and could manage my time in a very effective way.
III. Expectations before the placement
My expectations of the placement changed over time. In my home country, Mexico, I already did some internships; therefore, in the beginning, I thought the internship was going to be similar to the ones I had previously realised. However, it was a great experience having a completely different type of internship. Firstly, complete freedom and responsibility for my work and time. Secondly, collaborating with experts in their field, in that sense, it was straightforward to approach them about the things I was in doubt. And thirdly, working in a multicultural place, this was one of the most valuable things for me, I was able to understand the added value of diversity and having different ways of thinking.
IV. About the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA)
The GCA is an organisation that takes bold actions on adaptation that help societies across the world to become more resilient to climate-related threats. Adaptation solutions allow individuals, communities, and natural systems to deal with those consequences of climate change that can no longer be avoided. At the same time, it also involves taking practical actions to manage risks from climate impacts, protect communities and strengthen the resilience. The GCA opened its doors on September 2018 and is hosted by the government of the Netherlands, with offices in Rotterdam, Groningen, and China, and is expected to open new offices in Indonesia, the United States and Chile. The GCA, also acts as a solution broker, bringing together governments, the private sector, society, intergovernmental bodies, and knowledge institutions that can address the obstacles to generate adaptation solutions related to climate change. The Center builds on, improves, and accelerates breakthrough solutions that catalyse transformation at scale and speed. With its several partnerships, the Center works on supporting recommendations made by the Global Commission on Adaptation, while also pursuing practical and actionable steps that can help address policies, investments, financing, and governance needed for increased global adaptation action.
Apart from the overall scope described above, the Global Center on Adaptation also aims to set up new research and education programs, in close collaboration with academic partners and knowledge institutions. Therefore, the Groningen office, located at the European Academy Building contributes to the development of new education knowledge and expand the adaptation research agenda in the years to come, and also the Young Leaders Program is an excellent way for including the younger generations into the climate change agenda.
IV.I The Global Commission on Adaptation
The Global Commission on Adaptation seeks to accelerate adaptation action and
support by giving political visibility of adaptation and focusing on concrete solutions (GCA 2019). The main leaders of the commission are: Ban Ki-moon , ex secretary-General of the United Nations, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, and Kristalina Georgieva, CEO, World Bank. Additionally, it is guided by more than 30 commissioners and 18 convening countries, representing all regions of the globe. A global network of research partners and advisors support the Commission. The Commission is co-managed by the Global Center on Adaptation and the World Resources Institute (WRI).
In September the GCA and the WRI will deliver:
The Flagship Report: The commissioners will oversee the development of a flagship report. The report will present a compelling vision of an agenda for scaled-up and transformative adaptation and make the case to prioritize adaptation from the local to the global level. It will draw on inputs from research organizations, as well as governments, businesses, and international institutions.
The Action Tracks: In parallel, the Commission will catalyze and guide several high-impact action tracks on urgent issue areas, including food security, locally-led adaptation, infrastructure and urban resilience. Each track will build on existing initiatives, giving them added impetus to set and scale tangible and actionable targets. Key champions and coalitions will support each track.
Year of Action: The Commission will facilitate a Year of Action, starting in late 2019 and going through 2020, to advance the recommendations from the flagship report and the action tracks. This concentrated effort will help accelerate adaptation action and support that will improve human well-being and result in better, more sustainable economic development and security for all. The Global Commission on Adaptation seeks to accelerate adaptation action and support by elevating the political visibility of adaptation and focusing on concrete solutions.
IV.II Young Leaders Program
The Global Center on Adaptation create the Young Leadership Program for university students from all regions of the world. The main purpose of the three month program is to develop synergies between original and applied research. The program also, allows each student to bring new perspectives, innovative solutions and their backgrounds into the work of the GCA.
V. Assignment
Through my internship at the GCA, I received the individual assignment to conduct a desk-research on finding good practices on building disaster-resilient communities in Latin America and Asia. For that purpose, I had to design a stepwise methodology for identifying the more suitable practices and programs of the mentioned before areas. Since the beginning of my internship, I was given complete freedom and responsibility for the timely completion of my research. Additionally, they allowed me to choose the topic of my research and was guided by two supervisors experts in the field who helped me with every doubt I encountered in the way. In order to have my supervisors´ comments, I hold weekly meetings with them to discuss the details and advances of my research.
The reason why I chose to focus my report on building disaster-resilient communities, during my internship as a Young Leader in the GCA, had to do with previous personal experiences and my interest in the topic. For one side, living in Mexico means being very prone to climate change disaster due to the complexity and diversity of eco-systems that the country has. In 2017, I experienced one of the most strong earthquakes in the recent history of Mexico. However, people in Mexico are accustomed to the ground shaking. And since the first devastating earthquake in 1985, the Government and the civil society had been taken different measures to adapt to earthquakes. In the 2017 earthquake, many people lost their livelihoods, works and even their daily tranquillity; these environmental phenomena return to Mexico City to show us that we still need to do a lot in order to be as resilient as possible. However, I could not also stop wondering about the amount of damage that we would have had if we had not adapted disaster-resilient measures in the previous years.
The second reason for choosing this topic has to do with the fact that strengthening resilient communities is not only about disaster management, in fact, but it is also an essential tool for saving lives, assuring the development and creating a safer and better future for all. Communities with an environmental disaster risk approach are less susceptible to hazards, and they can recover faster from them (IFRC, Building
safer and resilient communities 2012). Therefore, I believe it is crucial to put on the spotlight all of those communities and organisations that are already building disaster-resilient communities. One of the most interesting things I realized during my research was that climate change is global, but disaster risk reduction begins at home.
All over the world, there are many local communities that are already taking some action to create more resilient communities. Therefore, it is essential to ground actions in the local knowledge; at the end of the day, the communities are the ones who know what is working, missing or can be improved. In that sense, education and share knowledge are vital. Stakeholders need to listen and learn from the local actions, so we can build good practices and reduce the damages of environmental disasters.
The main aim of my report is to assess the effectiveness of building disaster-resilient communities programs in Latin America and Asia, to determine which factors drive successful adaptation measures and which ones can represent obstacles. It requires knowledge of vulnerabilities and capacities to adapt to climate change and build resilience to disasters. Therefore, my research gathers current information about building disaster-resilient communities. As desk research, the analysis presented had considered several sources including academic papers, case studies, NGO´s reports, scientific reports and media. The lessons learned of my report have the potential to be replicable in the future. Furthermore, by integrating adaptation and resilience into long-term planning processes, communities may achieve valuable benefits (Cauffman 2015).
However, while doing my research, I encountered some difficulties in gathering data and sometimes the information available was not enough for a precise analysis. Therefore, the research suggests that to have information that can be used on a global scale, the data need to be consistent, standardised and globally open, and also, I conducted several interviews with key stakeholders to have a more in-depth understanding of their local programs. I had the opportunity to create a
semi-structured interview methodology, that allowed me to hold interviews with different organisations all over the world, like India and Mexico.
Holding the interviews was one of the most challenging parts for me because it was the first time that I needed to use a quantitative methodology for research. However, having multiple feedback from my supervisors and colleagues allowed me to discover this is a handy method, due to its flexibility.
At the same time, I was able to create a database of programs and organisations in Latin America and Asia that would enable the GCA to increase their network and alliances. At the time, will having contact with all of these organisations, I also spread the message of the urge to accelerate adaptation.
At the end of my report and internship, I did a series of recommendations for future researchers interested in building disaster resilient communities:
Step 1 How Expected output
Identify topic and region for adaptation
Explore vulnerabilities and select key
areas where
adaptation can reduce
vulnerabilities
- list with adaptation opportunities per region
Identify programmes on these vulnerabilities and regions Internet-based search for programmes. First hand reporting and secondary literature
- List of adaptation support programmes for region and topic identified
- First and second hand reporting
- First assessment of objectives and approaches per programme
Characterise the
programme
Analyse
documentation
- Characterisation of goals, instruments, involvement of stakeholders
- Overview of resources and how this has been spent. Analysis of results Check effectiveness of programme; has goal been reached. Consider efficiency, Distill good practice Interviews
- List of key factors for success for the programme in the country
Check for
replicability
Distinguish between factors that are local by nature and those that
are generic
and thus
replicable.
- Overview of replicable key factors, with their replicability potential per adaptation topic and region, key stakeholder involved
and recommended approach for
application in other areas and/or regions. - This information could then go in the GCA
good practice database and serve a function such as ‘find the expert.’
Another exciting thing during my time in the GCA, was that my internship coincided with the preparation of the Commission Report, which allowed me to witness the evolution of this project I found this particularly interesting, not only because the Report considers a wide range of climate adaptation challenges, but also because of the complex and multifaceted nature of organising a report of this stature. In that sense, I had multiple visits to the GCA´s office in Rotterdam; this was an excellent opportunity to have a better engagement and understanding about the evolution of
the Commission Report because most of my colleagues working in the Report are based in Rotterdam
During my internship, I also collaborated in the creation of events for the Center; one example was the official visit of the GCA´s CEO, Patrick Verkooijen and the director of the University of Leeuwarden. My central role during the visit was to organise the location, catering and presentations during the day. This was an excellent opportunity to show my ability to manage different situations at the same time, and I also learned more about behind the scene of creating a workshop and events. Through my internship, I had two evaluations; the first was the midterm evaluation in June. In that evaluation, my supervisors gave me excellent feedback, but also encouraged me to be bolder and asked them everything that I had doubts. The midterm evaluation was beneficial because I also have a clear understanding of where I was and what were de following steps to finishing my research. The second evaluation was also my final evaluation and graduation from the program. By the time I did this evaluation, I had finished my Report. Therefore I was able to share the results with all my colleagues. For that purpose, I did a 15 minutes presentation in were I talked about my experience in the organisation, but also about my research, my recommendations and findings. This was at the Rotterdam office, so I was able to present my findings with both of the GCAs offices. The CEO of the GCA thought I did a great job and mentioned about how to use my research for plans of the organisation. After the presentations, we went to a floating farm to see a real example of an adaptation solution.
VI. Suggestions for future students
I had a great experience doing my placement at the GCA. I encouraged any of my classmates to apply to the Young Leaders Program. However, before using it is essential to have some notion about what does adaptation to climate change mean, which are the most recent reports and news about it; and to get informed about the work on the GCA, especially of its first report that is going to be released on September 10th in China. Also, it’s essential to know that most of the tasks and assignments are designed to be undertaken by the individual job, so it is expected
that you have reasonable control of your own time and schedules. The GCA demands future leaders, and so on their internship program. Without a doubt, I can say I had invaluable experience, and I highly recommended to other students interested in the topic.
VII. Conclusion
Since I apply for the Young Leaders Program at the CGA, I already was excited with the idea of collaborating in an organisation that share with me the same values, goals and vision of the world. During my three month internship, I was able to have a better understanding of the different faces that adaptation to climate change can have. At the end of my placement and with the support of my supervisors, I learned to develop a stepwise methodology for creating desk research in finding good practices. Hopefully, in the future, other young leaders can replicate and enrich the method. Furthermore, I was able to create and identify a small database of organisations that are already creating good practices in adaptation in Latin America and Asia. Due to time restrictions, it was not possible to have an interview with all of the organisations. However, connecting with them could help in the expansion of the GCA’s network and allies, and most importantly, to spread the message of accelerating adaptation solutions.
My placement and my studies
Without a doubt, I can tell that doing a placement it is very important as a student, it allows to integrate classroom knowledge and theory with practical application and skills developed in professional or community settings. For me it was a very relevant experience, in which I can use my research abilities, that my university courses gave me. This was very helpful because I felt confident enough to design a methodology and I did not have to lose any time in trying to understand how to do it.
Also, I gain more experience in my career field, it prepares me to know what to expect in my future job search, and it increases my confidence.
VIII. Future career plans
After my internship, I realised I would like to work in an international organisation or any international public affairs consultancy, mainly because of the opportunity to work in a multicultural place. Having the opportunity to work at the GCA gave me an excellent network for the future with very interesting and passionate colleagues. The network is critical for life, and I think this internship provides me with a great environment to meet professionals,
During my assignment, I could notice that even though I like doing research, I have a bigger interest on more practical jobs or assignments, rather than jobs that are limited to the theoretical part of an analysis. Thus, I would like to work on something with more social interaction.
Furthermore, I became more aware of the environmental changes, and this has become a very important aspect of my daily life. Therefore, I will appreciate if can work in a company that is environmentally friendly or that has invested in sustainability throughout its entire business operations. I think this kind of companies is still quite new in Mexico, but I can notice that it is easier to have this mindset in The Netherlands. Therefore, studying a master and doing a placement in the Netherlands can offer me a bigger possibility to develop my career in that sense.
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