[enviro-vlc] WB Book Release: Reducing Poverty, Protecting Livelihoods, and Building Assets in a Changing Climate

[vern weitzel]

From: Sara Nielsen <sara.trab.nielsen at gmail.com>
Date: 2 September 2010 2:00:28 PM PDT
To: "Climate Change Info Mailing List" <climate-l at lists.iisd.ca>
Subject: Book Release: Reducing Poverty, Protecting Livelihoods, and Building Assets in a Changing Climate
Reply-To: Sara Nielsen <sara.trab.nielsen at gmail.com>

Dear Climate-L Readers,
 
I would like to share with you the recently released World Bank book Reducing Poverty, Protecting Livelihoods, and Building Assets in a Changing Climate
 
A copy can be obtained here: http://publications.worldbank.org/ecommerce/catalog/product?item_id=9588132
 
 
Abstract:
 
Climate change is the defining development challenge of our time. More than a global environmental issue, climate change and variability threaten to reverse recent progress in poverty reduction and economic growth. Both now and over the long run, climate change and variability threatens human and social development by restricting the fulfillment of human potential and by disempowering people and communities in reducing their livelihoods options.
Communities across Latin America and the Caribbean are already experiencing adverse consequences from climate change and variability. Poverty, inequality, water access, health, and migration are and will be measurably affected by climate change. Using an innovative research methodology, this study finds quantitative evidence of large variations in impacts across regions. Many already poor regions are becoming poorer; traditional livelihoods are being challenged in unprecedented ways; water scarcity is increasing, particularly in poor arid areas; human health is deteriorating; and climate-induced migration is already taking place and may increase.

Successfully reducing social vulnerability to climate change and variability requires action and commitment at multiple levels. This volume offers key operational recommendations at the government, community, and household levels with particular emphasis placed on enhancing good governance and technical capacity in the public sector, building social capital in local communities, and protecting the asset base of poor households.
 
"Dorte Verner and her team are once again ahead of the curve, bringing home the threat not just to our planet but our people in Reducing Poverty, Protecting Livelihoods, and Building Assets in a Changing Climate. They focus on the danger in the most human terms, examining the risk to our planet's most vulnerable, in particular the world's poor who rely on natural resources to survive—resources endangered by extreme weather changes. While focusing on Latin America, this book reminds us all there isn't a place on earth exempt from the threat of climate change. It's a moral wake-up call."

- John F. Kerry, U.S. Senator

"In this important and provocative volume, Dorte Verner and her colleagues provide an expansive treatment of climate change and its many effects, especially on the global poor."

- David Lee, Professor,
Cornell University

"This book is bound to become the defining analysis of climate change's implications for poverty and social cohesion. ... A key guide for policy makers."

Daniel Cohen, Professor and Vice President,
Paris School of Economics

"This much-welcome overview provides guidelines and suggests priorities for designing and implementing suitable adaptation measures."

- Anthony Hall, Professor,
London School of Economics