Question

In 500-1000 words (1-2 pages, double-spaced), provide an explanation of "Socioeconomic Status/Poverty and climate change – i.e. extreme weather (harsher winters and summers) and droughts, as two outcomes of climate change, disproportionately affect poorer individuals" and why/how it affects populations as a matter of public health. You can use the provided examples above as a starting point, but they cannot be the only example you provide.

Answer 1

Climate change is a serious risk to poverty reduction and threatens to undo decades of devel-opment efforts. As the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development states, “the adverse effects of climate change are already evident, natural disasters are more frequent and more devastating and developing countries more vulnerable.” While climate change is a global phenomenon, its negative impacts are more severely felt by poor people and poor countries. They are more vulnerable because of their high dependence on natural resources, and their limited capacity to cope with climate variability and extremes.

Experience suggests that the best way to address climate change impacts on the poor is by i ntegrating adaptation responses into development planning. This is fundamental to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including the over-arching goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015, and sustaining progress beyond 2015. The objective of this document is to contribute to a global dialogue on how to mainstream and integrate adaptation to climate change into poverty reduction efforts. We hope this will move the discussion further towards action. While this joint paper focuses on adaptation to climate change in relation to poverty, we understand that adaptation has to go hand in hand with mitigation of climate change by limiting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We also reaffirm that industrialized countries should take the lead in combating climate change and its adverse effects.

Today, it is widely agreed by the scientific commu-nity that climate change is already a reality. The rateand duration of warming observed during thetwentieth century are unprecedented in the pastthousand years. Increases in maximum temperatures, numbers of hot days, and the heat index have been observed over nearly all lands during the second half of the twentieth century. Collective evidence suggests that the observed warming over the past fifty years can be mostly attributed to human
activities. The warming trend in the global average