Climate Change and the Experience of Poverty Essay

Climate Change and the Experience of Poverty - Essay Example Mitigation encompasses reducing the impact that one has on the environment through reduction of one’s carbon footprint among other activities. Conversely, adaptation involves dealing with consequences of climate change by say, establishing methods of coping with regular floods. A gap exists in current literature on the relationship between climate change and poverty. Several analysts tend to focus on mitigation at the community level. Institutions have been formed to minimise energy use through transport. Others have addressed housing and urban development (Berrang-Ford et. al., 2011). While these efforts may contribute to long term solutions for the country in general, they do not address the direct challenges that disadvantaged community members face when dealing with extreme weather events. ... It is imperative for stakeholders at the national, corporate and local levels to target this group when creating interventions. Extreme weather events (Such as floods, storms, and cyclones) are a manifestation of climate change and have adverse effects on disadvantaged communities. Poor people live in less-robust settlements that often leave them defenceless against these situations. Furthermore, they lack information of how to protect themselves during such events. Demetriades and Esplen (2008) note that actions are necessary in order to strengthen the resilience of the vulnerable during extreme weather events. Stakeholders may empower the disadvantaged through information dissemination, infrastructural preparedness, housing tenure agreements, among others (McCright, 2010. One of the ways in which these changes are manifested is through community projects. Nongovernmental organizations and special interest groups may carry out community projects to build resilience among disadvantag ed communities. It is imperative to understand why such groups are performing this role, and whether their activities arose from gaps in policy interventions from the national and local governments. Community projects are insufficient as a coping strategy for disadvantaged communities (Zsamboky et. al., 2011). However, they represent an attempt by non-state actors to participate in an issue of grave national consequences. Their presence in deprived areas indicates that policy-makers may not be doing enough to prepare these communities for extreme weather conditions. Runhaar et. al. (2012) carried out a study in the Netherlands to assess the stimuli and barriers to climate change adaptations in urban areas. They found that a gap