Overview: Climate Change

Climate change is one of the greatest obstacles to ending poverty and one of the gravest equity challenges of our time. While the richest countries in the world have been responsible for a disproportionate amount of global carbon emissions which cause global warming, it is the poorest countries in the world that are hit first and worst by climate change.

Climate change has ready had disastrous effects on the world poorest communities. Extreme weather events, sea-level rise, drought, disruption of water and food supplies, and negative impacts on health, threaten the very possibility of escape from poverty and means that more people must struggle further to make ends meet.

Not all poor people will be affected equally by climate change. Women, who make up 70 percent of the world’s poor, depend more than men on natural resources that are threatened by climate change. Poor women also lack access to and control over natural resources, technologies, and credit. As a result, they are more vulnerable to seasonal and episodic weather and to natural disasters resulting from climate change.

Farmers, who are entirely dependent on weather patters and natural recourses for their livelihood, are also disproportionately affected by climate change. In fact, climate change presents one of the single greatest threats to food security in the poorest regions of the world. Scientific studies predict that yields from rain-fed agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa could be reduced by as much as 50 percent by 2020.

Climate change is forcing the world to acknowledge that there are ecological limits to economic growth, production and consumption. Developed and developing countries need to chart new low-carbon paths to development that protect inter-generational as well as intra-generational equity. Rich countries, and elites in poorer countries, need to substantially reduce their consumption so that poor people can increase their share of the world’s assets and resources, including ecological resources.

ActionAid is working with some of the poorest communities around the world to help them cope with the effects of a changing climate. For example:

  • In countries across the globe, ActionAid is implementing sustainable agriculture programs based on the agro-ecological approach aiming to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience of poor farmers. Activities range from local water and soil conservation schemes to participatory breeding and dissemination of drought resistant seeds and micro irrigation schemes. More...
  • Within ActionAid’s human security theme ActionAid is carrying out research and program interventions aimed at enabling some of the poorest and most vulnerable communities adapt to the effects of climate change. More...

ActionAid is working with our partners in the global South to gain testimonies of what poor communities are already doing to adapt to climate change and what support is still needed. These testimonies for the basis of much of our advocacy work in the North.