Natural variability of climate is leading to droughts and floods and occurrence of extreme weather events such as cyclones and extreme rainfall, which have adversely impacted both natural and man-made systems since time immemorial. Added to the impacts of natural variability of climate, will be the anticipated impacts of climate change in the 21st century, which will be mainly due to the loading of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from anthropogenic sources since industrialization. Developing countries are already faced with multiple stresses on their meager natural resources, weak infrastructure and institutional mechanisms. Climate change will be an additional stress and the resources available in future to developing and least developed countries will be insufficient to implement the required adaptation strategies for coping with the adverse impacts.

The World Bank in India has participated in various disaster response, reconstruction and rehabilitation related projects covering hurricane, floods, earthquakes and droughts. Experiences from these programs suggest adaptation strategies are required even to combat the current climate variability and extremes.

Project activities under the above mentioned project included:

• TASK A: Assessing the present situation (baseline).
  
  
• Current climate and trends in South Asia (temperature, precipitation, cyclones, sea level)
• Associated selected risks and their trends (floods, droughts, cyclones, sea level rise)
• Assessing current damages to macro-economy
• Assessing damages on agriculture, water resources, infrastructure, and health sectors, as
• applicable in terms of significance, in most vulnerable regions (hot spots) on most
• vulnerable groups (communities, the poor) due to above risks.
• Assessing current adaptation measures (autonomous and planned at local, state and national levels) for the above risks
• Assessing barriers to current adaptive capacity.
  
  
• TASK B: Assessing future situation.
  
  
• Future climate projections (2040-2060)
• Assessing likely socio economic development
• Assessing exacerbated risks due to climate change
• Assessing requirements of enhanced and additional adaptation measures and policy implications
• Assessing opportunities for mainstreaming adaptation opportunities at the national, regional, state, local and community levels
  
  
• TASK C: Task A and B lead to the development of an adaptation framework in the context of climate change and subsequently the final report was submitted to the World Bank.