Resources to Move from Surviving to Adapting
To absorb risks and rise up again after disasters, people need a resource base. Strategies available to poor people with no resources are mostly maladaptive, such as forced migration, borrowing money and selling labour in advance. These are desperate measures and unsustainable. Ownership patterns in relation to the means of production mean that poor people have very little access to or control over natural resources. They are kept poor by unfair production structures and land tenure systems. They are paid too little for their work and made to work in insecure and exploitative conditions. Unequal power relationships between poor people and public representatives, social institutions and local authorities increase their vulnerability to disasters and the impacts of climate change. This inequality needs to be addressed to facilitate poor people’s adaptation to climate change.
Rich Countries – Time to Pay Your Debts
Rich countries are responsible for global warming and the resulting changes in climate. They should reduce their emissions and provide adequate financing to support poor people’s adaptation. Compensation – not aid or loans – should be legally committed and in the form of public funds that are additional to the internationally agreed Official Development Assistance target of 0.7% of GNP (Gross National Product). At least 50% of total climate finance should be pre-allocated to adaptation. Funding procedures should be simplified to allow developing countries direct access to resources. They should ensure that poor and vulnerable groups, especially women, play a key role in determining how funds are spent and monitored locally.
About the Authors:
Farah Kabir is Country Director and Sajid Raihan is Manager, Climate Change Adaptation & Disaster Risk Reduction for ActionAid Bangladesh.
About ActionAid BangladeshActionAid is an international anti-poverty agency whose aim is to fight poverty worldwide. Formed in 1972, they have worked to help over 13 million of the world’s poorest and most disadvantaged people in 42 countries worldwide, including Bangladesh.
Headquartered at Johannesburg, South Africa, they work with local partners to fight poverty and injustice worldwide, helping them fight for and gain their rights to food, shelter, work, education, healthcare and a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. For more information, visit www.actionaid.org and http://www3.actionaid.org/bangladesh/.
