Climate Change Adaptation

Enabling people living in poverty to adapt

Read summary (PDF 58KB)

This is a summary of a forthcoming Oxfam International Research Report.

Summary

Climate change threatens development and is fast pushing the poorest and most marginalised communities beyond their capacity to respond to climate variability and disasters. But communities themselves are the key to unlocking what is needed for successful adaptation to climate change. They are aware of the changes that are happening in their own contexts, and how this is impacting on their livelihoods.

This paper seeks to bring together knowledge from Oxfam’s work on livelihoods, natural resource management, and disaster risk reduction to show what can work for adaptation to various climate hazards. It further seeks to locate that approach within a vulnerability context, whereby differentiated vulnerability is analysed and acted upon, prioritising the needs of communities and individuals most vulnerable to climate change within national approaches to adaptation.

Finally, it seeks to reorient national adaptation planning around the process by which international, national and sub-national provision can be utilised to deliver adaptation that communities need, particularly those most vulnerable to climate change.

Climate change adaptation in practice

Oxfam supports communities and organisations around the world that are already developing the tools and techniques that can be used to adapt to climate change. From Pakistan to Bolivia, read case studies of how Oxfam is working with these communities:

Rescuing the Past: Using Indigenous Knowledge to Adapt to Climate Change in Bolivia (PDF 454KB)

Climate Change Adaptation in Coastal Pakistan (PDF 577KB)

Jasmine Rice in the Weeping Plain: Using Adapting Rice Farming to Climate Change in Northern Thailand (PDF 516KB)

Oxfam International Discussion Paper

Author: Catherine Pettengell.

Publication date: 2 November 2009