Climate Change and Poverty

In a situation where we – that is, the world – do not seem to manage to address and curtail climate change (preventive actions), it becomes all the more important to address its consequences (curative/remedial actions).

This book is an important contribution to the latter (Hallegate, et. al. 2016) (Note 3). Abstract from the book:

"Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win” situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones."

Lars T Soeftestad

Notes
(1) Adapted from a post on the Supras page on Facebook, 14 July 2016, at: www.facebook.com/SuprasLtd
(2) The book, together with supporting documents, including overviews and policy notes, are available in English, French and Spanish. All documents can be downloaded for free (Licence CC BY 3.0 IGO.)
(3) Image credit: Hallegate, et. al. (2016).
(4) Permalink. URL: https://devblog.no/en/article/climate-change-and-poverty
(5) This article was published 1 August 2016. It was revised 10 September 2018.

Source
Hallegatte, Stephane, et. al. 2016. Shock waves: Managing the impacts of climate change on poverty. Washington, DC: World Bank. URLs: http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22787  &  https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/22787