Climate Change and Poverty

Extreme weather such as heat and cold waves and changing drainage patterns in the urban environment are expected to produce shifts in energy demand due to building design and internal temperature control. Also, we need to approach these issues with solutions that are sustainable as well as energy efficient. It is important that the climate change problem is seen through the lens of a ‘capability approach,’ where the poor are seen as partners in the fight against poverty. There is a need to increase their capacity to fight against the outcomes of climate change, give them the power of information, make them aware, as well as increase their capacity to participate in their development.Social, political and economic solutions need to be designed to make the poor asset holders, thus, indirectly decreasing their vulnerability and increasing their capabilities.

This brief studies the connection between climate change and poverty and how climate change and climate variability worsens poverty.