Oxfam report urges hastened adaptation, mitigation measures

May 12, 2010 News

“Climate change is fast pushing communities, particularly the most poor and marginalized, beyond their capacity to respond.”
This is according to the most recent Oxfam report on the subject which can only compliment Head of State Bharrat Jagdeo’s push for developed countries to put more finances into assisting poor and developing countries to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change.
The report in its executive summary states that while there are limits to adaptation, and without
rapid and significant global mitigation, these options will be quickly lost.
While there has been an initial commitment of some US$30B, that money is yet to be realized, as is a mechanism to access the money.
The report identifies the need for a combination of bottom-up and top-down processes in order to create the enabling conditions needed for people living in poverty to adapt to climate change.
It also draws on case studies from around the world and Oxfam’s experience working with rural communities to set out what is needed and a range of interventions that are available to enable people living in poverty to adapt to climate change
According to the Oxfam report, climate change forces a more holistic approach, not only to lift people out of poverty, but also to enable them to manage risk, uncertainty, and change, and to make them agents of their own destiny to shape, create, and respond to changes throughout their lives.
This also can only serve to complement Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy which President Jagdeo has been actively pursuing.
The report states also that adaptation isn’t a choice between reducing general vulnerability and preparing for specific hazards but rather it is a process of assessing and reassessing conditions and information related to climate change impacts and to the factors that leave people unable to adapt.
This adaption, according to Oxfam, must go beyond resilience, which deteriorates as conditions change.
“It demands flexibility and learning through every institution, from household to government.
It demands an approach that combines bottom-up with top-down processes; local knowledge and scientific knowledge; reducing vulnerability and addressing impacts; specific responses and managing uncertainty; sustainable livelihoods, natural resource management and DRR approaches; change, and learning how to change. Climate change forces us to draw the strands together.”