Climate change as part of the post-2015 development agenda
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Climate change as part of the post-2015 development agenda
Lucy Scott and Andrew Scott argue that climate change should be a part of the post-2015 development agenda. The fact that climate change is now broadly recognized as a reality and a threat and has serious impact on development issues such as agriculture is enough to include and relate it to the development agenda. Ignoring to include this topic in the post-2015 global development agenda might condemn many people to a lifetime of poverty since climate change it is related to issues such as agriculture, water resources, inequities between developing and developed worlds.
Climate Change and agriculture
Many developing countries are dependent on agriculture and climate-sensitive natural resources to ensure their prosperity and well-being but do not have the capacities to manage climate-related risks. “Research on the potential impact of climate change in rural India finds that poverty could increase by between 1% and 6% by 2040 when compared to a counterfactual of no global warming (Skoufias et al., 2011) as a result of lost agricultural productivity and incomes and rising cereal prices. Poor people are hit hardest: most affected by rising costs of staple foods (Jacoby et al., 2011 in Skoufias et al., 2011).”
Climate Change's impact on MDGs
Furthermore climate change threatens the achievement of other MDGS and might stall or reverse improvements already made.MDG3 (gender equality) might be affected given that water scarcity and rising food prices are phenomenas linked to women-related issues. “Climate-proofing’is necessary for any agreement post-2015 on development. The response by international actors to climate-change are relevant to the development agenda since measures such as carbon emissions cutting and sustainable development implicitly requires equity between nations and poverty reduction. The calls for the inclusion of sustainability in the post-2015 agenda are another reason to include climate change in this platform. MDG7 needs to be broadened to include indicators of vulnerability and resilience to mitigate the risk of external shocks.
“Climate change challenges sectors that matter for poverty eradication. The energy sector, for example, needs to produce new energy in a low carbon way to benefit the 1.6 billion people – many of them in remote and rural communities – who lack electricity. Most can be served with stand-alone systems based on renewable energy resources [1], rather than developing new systems or extending old ones. Agriculture is both a victim and a perpetrator of climate change, responsible for almost 15% of annual GHG emissions [2].”
See also
References
Scott, Lucy and Andrew Shepherd.2011.Climate change as part of the post-2015 development agenda.http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/docs/7133.pdf Overseas Development Institute. Bradbrook,Adrian J. Judith Gail. Gardam. 2008.Placing Access to Energy Services within a Human Rights Framework. Human Rights Quarterly 28(2):389-415. Nelson, G.20090 Agriculture and Climate Change: An Agenda for Negotiation in Copenhagen’. IFPRI Focus 16(1)
