Climate or development: Is ODA diverted from its original purpose?

We analyze the interaction of climate and development policy that has taken place since the early 1990s. Increasing dissatisfaction about the results of traditional development cooperation and the appeal of climate policy as a new policy field led to a rapid reorientation of aid flows. At the turn of the century, over 7% of aid flows were spent on greenhouse gas emissions mitigation. However, the contribution of emissions mitigation projects to the central development objective of poverty reduction as specified in the Millennium Development Goals is limited and other project types are likely to be much more effective. Adaptation to climate change can be expected to have higher synergies with poverty alleviation than mitigation, primarily through its impact on health, the conservation of arable land and the protection against natural disasters. An analysis of the Clean Development Mechanism shows that projects addressing the poor directly are very rare; even small renewable energy projects in rural areas tend to benefit rich farmers and the urban population. Use of development aid for CDM projects and / or their preparation via capacity building is thus clearly not warranted. --ODA,climate policy,poverty reduction,MDGs,CDM,mitigation,adaptation

The poverty impacts of climate change : a review of the evidence

Climate change is believed to represent a serious challenge to poverty reduction efforts around the globe. This paper conducts an up-to-date review of three main strands of the literature analyzing the poverty impacts of climate change : (i) economy-wide growth models incorporating climate change impacts to work out consistent scenarios for how climate change might affect the path of poverty over the next decades; (ii) studies focusing on the poverty impacts of climate change in the agricultural sector; and (iii) studies exploring how past climate variability impacts poverty. The analysis finds that the majority of the estimates of the poverty impacts tend to ignore the effect of aggregate economic growth on poverty and household welfare. The empirical evidence available to date suggests that climate change will slow the pace of global poverty reduction, but the expected poverty impact will be relatively modest and far from reversing the major decline in poverty that is expected to occur over the next 40 years as a result of continued economic growth. The studies focusing on the sector-specific channels of impacts of climate change suggest that the estimated impacts of climate change on agricultural yields are generally a poor predictor of the poverty impacts of climate change at the national level due to heterogeneity in the ability of households to adapt. It also appears that the impacts of climate change are generally regressive, that is, they fall more heavily on the poor than the rich.Rural Poverty Reduction,Climate Change Economics,Science of Climate Change,Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases,Regional Economic Development

Community-based risk management arrangements : an overview and implications for social fund programs

Risk and its consequences pose a formidable threat to poverty reduction efforts. This study reviews a plethora of community-based risk management arrangements across the developing world. These types of arrangements are garnering greater interest in light of the growing recognition of the relative prominence of household or individual-specific idiosyncratic risk as well as the increasing shift towards community-based development funding. The study discusses potential advantages (such as targeting, cost, and informational) and disadvantages (such as exclusion and inability to manage correlated risk) of these arrangements, and their implications for the design of innovative social fund programs.Rural Poverty Reduction,Labor Policies,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Currencies and Exchange Rates,Debt Markets

Risk and vulnerability : the forward looking role of social protection in a globalizing world

The paper outlines a forward-looking role of social protection against the background of increasing concerns about risk, and vulnerability, exemplified by the recent East Asian crisis, the concerns of the World Development Report (WDR) 2000, the need for a better understanding of poverty dynamics, and the opportunity and risks created by globalization. These considerations, and the need for a more proactive approach to lasting poverty reduction, have led to the development of a new conceptual framework, which casts social protection as social risk management. The paper highlights the main elements of the new conceptual framework, and its main strategic conclusions for attacking poverty, before addressing crucial issues for its implementation: the need for an operational definition of vulnerability; the use of social risk assessments as an operational entry point for a new policy dialogue; economic crisis management, and the lessons for social protection; and, the undertaking of social expenditure reviews to enhance the effectiveness of government intervention for addressing risk and vulnerability. The pilot experience with some of these elements, yields cautious optimism that a promising road for addressing poverty has been found.Environmental Economics&Policies,Social Risk Management,Health Economics&Finance,Poverty Assessment,Insurance&Risk Mitigation

Use of household food insecurity scales for assessing poverty in Bangladesh and Uganda.

An important dimension of poverty is access to food. Household food security implies access to the food needed for a healthy and productive life. Lack of access to and/or impaired utilization of food contribute to household food insecurity. This study compares the utility of a standardized food security scale for determining the food insecurity status of rural and urban households in Bangladesh and Uganda and for predicting poverty status. The analysis uses data from the IRIS Composite Survey Household Questionnaire (2004), which consists of 1,587 households (approximately 800 households in each country). The coping mechanisms adopted in the presence of food shortage represent the building blocks for development of the scale (7 items). In order to assess the suitability of the scale as an estimator of the households poverty status, the benchmark indicator "daily expenditures per capita" and its relation to the corresponding poverty line serves as the basis for evaluation on each country. The scale provides the means for classifying the households into 3 main groups: Non Food Insecure, Moderately Food Insecure, and Severely Food Insecure. The reliability of the scale is measured via the Cronbach's Alpha statistic. In addition, the scale is used in regression analysis in order to predict per capita daily expenditures and the poverty incidence. The results show that food insecurity does not always reflect (income) poverty. However, the use of the scale as predictor of poverty status produces rough estimates of poverty incidence that could be useful as background information. The differentiation of households according to their food security status may be valuable for focusing and developing improved food insecurity mitigation strategies.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty,

Social Implications of Climate Change in Latin America and the Caribbean

Climate change is the defining development challenge of our time. More than a global environmental issue, climate change is also a threat to poverty reduction and economic growth and may unravel many of the development gains made in recent decades. Latin America and the Caribbean account for a relatively modest 12 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,1 but communities across the region are already suffering adverse consequences from climate change and variability (De la Torre, Fajnzylber, and Nash 2009). As highlighted in “Reducing Poverty, Protecting Livelihoods, and Building Assets in a Changing Climate” (Verner 2010), climate change is likely to have unprecedented social, economic, environmental, and political repercussions.climate change, latin america, weather, mitigation, adaptation, climate policy, developing countries, world bank, flood, drought, temperature

Implications of and possible responses to climate change

Climate change is expected to worsen food insecurity and seriously undermines rural development prospects. It makes it harder to achieve the Millenium Development Goals and ensure a sustainable future beyond 2015. Findings from the recent 4th assessment report of IPCC, Working Group II indicate that already towards 2050 with respect to food crops yield losses between 10 and 30 % can be expected as compared to current conditions in large parts of Africa, including Western, Eastern and southern Africa. Climate change is likely to increase disparities between developed and the developing world, while many uncertainties remain. It is, for instance, estimated that developing countries would need to bear 75-80 % of the costs of damages caused by a changing climate. The prevention of such threats cannot rely on economic growth, but requires climate policies that combine enhancement of development with reduction of vulnerabilities and effective financing mechanisms that support the transition to low-carbon economics. The major strategies to reduce the potentially harmful effects of global changes, especially climate change are 1) adaptation of food and farming systems to climate change, 2) enhancing their resilience and adaptive capacity to changes in climate variability and extremes that are difficult to predict, and to global change more generally (including socio-economic changes), and 3) mitigation of climate change and trading the options to mitigate in low-income countries on the global carbon markets to create a substantial financial flow from the North to the South

Sustainable rural development with emphasis on agriculture and food security within the climate change setting : SARD-climate final report

Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Development (SARD) is considered an essential step toward achieving the first Millenium Development Goal (MDG) of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty. In order to achieve this important goal, first it is important to find ways of increasing the incomes of the rural poor, who mostly depend on upon agriculture for their livelihoods. This means improving development, cooperation, trade and agricultural policy to improve agriculture's contribution to economic development and poverty reduction. Current projects estimate that 1.02 billion people will go hungry in 2009 alone; an indication that if efforts are not directed at reversing this trend it would most likely continue. The research on climate change effect on productivity and rural development is scarce. The high uncertainty of climate change effects and the implications on agriculture is based on extrapolations and scenarios. Our knowledge on local environmental issues and agriculture is insufficient and local agricultural research data do mostly not exist. The agricultural sector requires investments and incentives that can guarantee sustainable development. Farmers need credit possibilities in order to buy input, to make investments and to finance adaptation measures. Fair Trade certification offers one way to guarantee minimum prices for farmers

The Local Dimension of Energy

In this paper, we postulate that some of the best opportunities for reducing energy demand and carbon emissions are through stronger involvement and leadership from local government. We show that local government can and do have a significant impact on both energy production and energy consumption and are important participants for the implementation of distributed generation (DG). the progress being made by successful local governments can be narrowed to three key factors. First, they have all recognised the co-benefits of a local energy strategy: a reduction in fuel poverty, increased employment, improved quality of life and mitigation of uncertain fuel supplies and prices. Secondly, successful councils have strong political leadership and employee support to implement the structural change to bring about change. Thirdly, leading councils have gained momentum by working in partnership with utilities, private companies, NGO’s, DNO’s and government departments to raise finance and garner support. While climate change remains a global issue, some of the best strategies for mitigation are implemented at the local level

Growth and Poverty in Pakistan: Implications for Governance

According to the Economic Surveys, Pakistan’s real GDP has grown at an average annual rate of 6.8 percent in the 1960s, 4.8 percent in the 1970s, 6.5 percent in the 1980s and 4.7 percent in the 1990s. However, that did not seem to have mitigated poverty as parallel to this growth the number of poor also kept swelling. Although different estimates put number of poor in Pakistan around 50 million, the actual could be more [Ahmad (2001)]. The average growth rates in the first halfcentury of Pakistan have been around 2 percent [Hasan (1997)]. It is pertinent to state that this discussion paper is not an attempt to challenge the figures either of the growth rates or the numbers of the poor in Pakistan. This is rather an attempt to understand the correlation of governance with growth on one hand and poverty on the other. It offers conceptual analysis of the concepts and their respective interpretation, explanation, application and ensuing misunderstandings. This paper has also attempted to challenge certain (usual) assumptions and perceptions regarding the role and relationship of growth and governance in reducing poverty in Pakistan. One has pointed out that most of the studies on the subject focus on symptoms and not the causes of poverty. This leads to on one hand growth of poverty, as poverty does not seem to halt despite certain evidence of relatively high growth particularly in 1960s. On the other hand we witness poverty of growth as whatever growth we have had it has hitherto failed either translating into corresponding mitigation of poverty or equitable collective prosperity. This is because there have not been efforts at governance level to ensure equity of impact of growth through adequate distribution mechanisms, sufficient social and human investments leading to education and skill development of women and men, who in turn could benefit from opportunities arising by way of process of economic growth.