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Climate change and poverty reduction: the missing link

Published: 09/12/2019

With ten years left to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and COP25 into its second week, FAO proposes a climate-poverty approach to improve the ways in which the interrelated challenges of poverty and climate change are addressed and ensure that responses to both are more coherent, effective and sustainable. The report, ‘Addressing the climate change and poverty nexus: A coordinated approach in the context of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement’, presents tools and an integrated approach to support the development of coherent policies, actions and linkages between climate responses and poverty reduction and food security initiatives.

Climate change is inextricably linked with the work of FAO, as agriculture and food systems play a fundamental role in feeding a growing population and tackling the climate crisis. But FAO’s response to climate change goes beyond agriculture and food systems: it cuts across many other areas of the organization’s work, including poverty reduction.

Climate change and poverty are both phenomena that tend to hit the most vulnerable the hardest, and climate change is expected to worsen poverty and disproportionately affect vulnerable groups and those facing inequality, particularly women and indigenous peoples. Coastal systems and SIDS are particularly prone to climate risks, and people who live and work in coastal communities often experience high levels of climate-related vulnerability associated with the combined effect of high levels of exposure and sensitivity to climate variability, sparse support infrastructure, and lack of adaptation options. With so many shared aspects and challenges, an approach that addresses both climate change and poverty responses while taking into account aspects such as indigenous peoples, gender, food security, and disaster response is not only feasible, it would also be beneficial.

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