Polkadot JAM Slides - Token2049 - By Dr. Gavin Wood
Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries
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2. Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Heather McGray World Resources Institute Transforming Transportation 2010 January 15, 2010 IADB, Washington, DC
Vulnerability varies in no small part by level of development. Those who have fewer resources in general have fewer resources for contending with climate change. For this reason, adaptation is intricately intertwined with development – many development activities foster adaptation and vice versa. Exactly how this happens – e.g. whether a given development initiative is adaptive – varies greatly from place to place, depending upon socioeconomic, environmental, climatic, institutional and other factors.
Huge diversity of activities Many are things you might want to do even if the climate weren’t changing. On p.15 of Weathering the Storm
The report proposes a continuum of adaptation from “pure” development activities to very explicit measures to address climate change. At one far end of the continuum, adaptation efforts overlap almost completely with traditional development practice, where activities take little or no account of specific climate change impacts. At the far opposite end, highly specialized activities are developed in response to observed or anticipated changes in climate, and fall outside the realm of development as we know it. In between lies a broad spectrum of activities with gradations of “normal” development and climate change-focused activities. Examples: literacy on the far left, building a ‘safe island’ on the far right many things in the middle which would be good to do in a stable climate, but are even more important – or must be done differently – under a changing climate. IWMR, for instance.
For more information and an elaborated continuum, see “Weathering the Storm” (2007). Key challenges: moving to national and sectoral levels – how to frame adaptation then?