Climate Change–Disproportionately Impacts Poor

[Vipin Sharma]

Climate change impacts and associated vulnerability are of particular concern to developing countries like India. Vast population depend on climate sensitive sectors like agriculture and forestry for livelihood. By adversely affecting freshwater availability and quality, biodiversity and desertification, climate change tends to disproportionately impact the poorest in the society exacerbating inequities in access to food, water and health. The capacity to adapt is a function of access to wealth scientific and technical knowledge, information, skills, infrastructure, institutions and equity and therefore varies among regions and socio-economic groups. Climate change therefore is intrinsically linked to other environmental issues and to the challenge to sustainable development. For climate change research to feed into national level policymaking, an understanding of the regional micro-level aspects of poverty and climate change vulnerability is required. The third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) called for “greater emphasis on the development of methods for assessing vulnerability, especially at national and sub-national scales where impacts of climate change are felt and responses are implemented.
Sustainable development issues are of core concern to the country providing the best mechanism to address most of these issues. Commitment to the UNFCCC as well as many other Multilateral Environmental Agreements Highlights India’s concerns related to these issues besides other steps that have been taken to address to push socio- economic development and eradicate poverty. India is particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts in view of the high percentage of population dependent on climate sensitive sources for a living and the impact on economic growth. Sensitivities due to long coastline exposed to sea level rise and storm surges, poverty and lack of access to even basic facilities and services like water, health and electricity to many area critical factor.
The Government in this view has been trying to mainstream these concerns into the relevant sector policies. Several ongoing efforts address some of these vulnerability concerns, although they are primarily driven by the objective of sustainable livelihood and poverty alleviation.
Following are some of the ongoing programmes of the Government to promote sustainable agriculture, forestry and coastal zone development:
• Drought and Flood Proofing Measures
• Zero-tillage Practices
• Development of Drought Resistant varieties and salt tolerant varieties
• Promoting on-farm water management practices and promotion of water conserving technologies
• Kissan Credit Scheme
• Promoting Crop Diversification
• Insurance
• Integrated Watershed Management Programme
• Coastal Zone Management Plan
• Joint Forestry Management Plan
• Joint Forestry Management Programme and many others to add.
Funding Procedures
In response to these concerns, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has announced the development of four funds, to support adaptation-the Least Developed Country (LDC) Fund, Strategic Priority on Adaptation, the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) and the Kyoto Protocol Driven Adaptation Fund. While the first three funds have been operationlised the resources available under the funds that are made available. The World Bank estimates to Climate-proof investments in developing countries alone indicate resources required at the scale of US $ 10 billion to $ 40 billion per year (World Bank, 2006). Procedures regarding the implementation of the Adaptation fund are still not finalised as proceeds from the Clean Development Mechanism Projects will be directed towards operationalising this fund.
Strengthening institutional frameworks, correcting market failures (e.g., failures to reflect environmental damage or resource depletion in prices or inadequate economic valuations of biodiversity), and prompting public participation, education and capacity building can help in adaptation measures. Regional cooperation and experience sharing amongst countries would assist in developing adaptation options.
The challenges lie in identifying opportunities that would facilitate sustainable development by making use of existing technologies and development policies that make climate –sensitive sectors resilient to today’s climate variability. This strategy will require developing countries to have access to appropriate technologies, information, and adequate financing. As it is the coping mechanisms in developing countries are stretched to deal with natural calamities. Adding the climate change dimension implies additional burden and adaptation will require anticipatory planning; failure to prepare systems for projected changes in climate variability and extremes could lead to capital intensive development of infrastructure or technologies that are ill suited to future conditions, as well as missed opportunities to lower the costs of adaptation.