Mainstreaming climate change into European Union development policy : Malta's official development assistance priority countries

Abstract

The main focus of this dissertation is an investigation of the mainstreaming climate change adaptation into development policy, with a specific attention to Malta's Official Development Assistance (ODA). It is divided into five main chapters and starts by aiming at highlighting the drastic impacts of climate change as a global challenge being faced worldwide whilst providing an overview of climate change adaptation with specific reference towards Least Developing Countries and the effects on development. The chapter ends with a description of what mainstreaming climate change is referred to and throughout the chapter examples of important climate change negotiations are highlighted both on a European Union and International level. Each chapter provides an introduction and a conclusion for better understanding of the research topics and the aims of each chapter. The second chapter follows, first focusing on defining the European Union Development Policy by than analysing it in view of its progress in mainstreaming climate change adaptation. To introduce the second part of the dissertation title, an overview of Malta's Official Development Assistance is provided, highlighting the main achievements and drawbacks that occurred in the allocation of assistance funds within the past years since Malta's accession in the European Union in 2004. The research methodology explains the procedures that have been used to answer the research question. It first analyses some of the studies that have been conducted on framing adaptation in the context of development intervention and then introduces the two main research methods, portfolio screening and climate-lens criteria. This section aims at providing the best understanding of the main research methods and why they have been used The methodology aims at analysing the degree of mainstreaming climate change adaptation into the eighteen Malta's 2011 Official Development Assistance projects, in which the difficulties and challenges faced within the collection phase of project contents is outlined. An explanation of how the methods have been applied to answer the research question is provided in this section and pictures have been used for further understanding of the processes engaged. The degree of mainstreaming is analysed on the criteria provided by the OECD climate-lens where each project is given a score on the basis of which it can be determined the level of mainstreaming within a specific project. The evaluation chapter of the projects results provides a detailed description of all scores, highlighting the reasons and key arguments for the allocation of a specific score. It gives readers and interested bodies other highlights explored from the various papers used and some suggestions have been added for similar future research. The outcome result shows that the degree of mainstreaming climate change adaptation is quite moderate with only a project scoring a high degree of mainstreaming. The dissertation ends by providing a final chapter which concludes the results and the findings for the research question and the main area of focus of the dissertation itself.