Poverty and Climate Change: The Three Tasks of Transformative Global Social Policy

Abstract

We live in times of overlapping and complex crises: socioeconomic, political, financial, and also environmental. Perhaps the most challenging of these problems are the risks posed by climate change to both biophysical and social systems in situations where structural conditions of poverty and inequality prevail. Unless we address the causes of climate change and protect vulnerable populations we are heading toward changes in biophysical systems that would create a planet Earth we have never seen and, perhaps, social collapse. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report already established the links between climate impacts on natural resources of central importance for poor people, such as water and food security (IPCC, 2007). Climate change is likely to lead to both substantive water scarcity and water-related damage. Higher temperatures along with higher concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere also affect the onset of seasons, change disease vectors, increase ocean acidification, and lead to destruction of coral reefs and salinization of coastal areas. Increases in wildfires, changed insect life cycles, changes in the onset and end of seasons, and changes in ecosystems leading to less biodiversity are all expected results of small overall increases in temperature of about 1.5 to 2.5 degrees (IPCC, 2007).