Knowledge Gaps and Challenges in Climate Change and Poverty: Results of a Systematic Review
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Reviews gaps in climate change and poverty research, calling for empirical research to better understand the connections between climate change and poverty.
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Knowledge Gaps and Challenges in Climate Change and Poverty: Results of a Systematic Review
- 1. September 10, 2018, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada Knowledge Gaps and Challenges in Climate Change and Poverty: Results of a Systematic Review Sophia Huyer
- 2. CCAFS goals, objectives and targets • Overall goal to catalyse positive change towards CSA, food systems and landscapes • Focus on three dimensions: Reducing poverty Improving food and nutrition security for health Improving natural resource systems and ecosystem services • Aim to have 11 million farm households adopt CSA by 2022 • Assist 9 million people, of whom 50% are women, to exit poverty
- 3. MitigationAdaptation Resilience Emissions Food and nutritional security Climate smart agriculture (CSA)
- 4. Other drivers of poverty Exposure Climate hazards Adaptive capacity vulnerability Food and nutritional insecurity Risk context Agricultural productivity & returns Assets Poverty and inequality Outcomes Floods Unreliable seasons Saline intrusion Drought Heat Cyclones Non-farm income Distress sales Destruction during extremes Livelihoods modified from Hallegatte et al. 2016 Drivers Climate change impacts on poverty
- 5. Topic covered Search terms Comments Climate change TI=(“climat*” OR “change” OR “variabili*” OR “resilience” OR “pathways” OR “shocks” OR “surge” OR “sea level rise” OR “storm” OR “storms” OR “flood” OR “floods” OR “drought*” OR “extreme” OR “extremes” OR “warm*” OR “salinity” OR “natural disasters” OR “*adaptation” OR “hurricane*” OR “typhoon*” OR “cyclon*” OR “landslide*” OR ”heat wave*” OR “hailstorm*” OR “tornado*” OR “thunderstorm*” OR “blizzard*” OR “avalanche*”) Several terms linked to ‘change’ that are used in the climate change literature were used, e.g. ‘resilience’, ‘pathways’ Terms related to extremes events were included Poverty AND TI=(“poverty” OR “welfare” OR “vulnerab*” OR “livelihood*” OR “poor” OR “income*” OR “household*”) Various terms linked to poverty analyses were used. Agriculture and food security AND TI=(“rural” OR “agricultur*” OR “crop*” OR “livestock” OR “aquac*” OR “fish*” OR “farm*” OR “food” Terms linked to agriculture and food systems were used.
- 6. Journal articles on “climate”-”agriculture”-”poverty” 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Numbers per year (total = 295) Campbell et al. Forthcoming
- 7. Regional distribution Campbell et al. forthcoming 5% 6% 13% 12% 5% 9%8% 25% 6% 5% 2%4% South America Central America Southern Africa East Africa Central Africa West Africa MENACA South Asia South East Asia East Asia Pacific Global
- 8. Other drivers of poverty Exposure Climate hazards Adaptive capacity vulnerability Food and nutritional insecurity Risk context Agricultural productivity & returns Assets Poverty and inequality Outcomes Floods Unreliable seasons Saline intrusion Drought Heat Cyclones Non-farm income Distress sales Destruction during extremes Livelihoods modified from Hallegate et al., 2016 drivers Few really useful detailed studies on CC-poverty Cross-regional comparisons difficult because of the diverse methods used in different regions. Lots on vulnerability, few on poverty Little on slow onset CC Time ripe for globally comparative study Little on gender and inequality
- 9. Youth child or children or youth or boy or girl or boys or girls Indigenous traditional_communities or traditional_community or inigenous_people or aborginal Marginalised marginalised_groups or marginalised_group or marginal_groups or or marginal_group or ethnic_groups or ethnic_group or disadvantaged_groups or disadvantaged_group or ethnic or ethnicity or tribes or tribe or caste or castes Inequality Inequality or inequity or equity or equality or inclusive Gender gender or female or women or grandmother or maternal “Sex” excluded as it did not add anything and gave problems, e.g. “Sussex” Social inclusion search terms
- 10. Mentions of social inclusion topics 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Gender Youth and children Youth only Marginalised Indigenous Inequality Percentage of mentions
- 11. Significant 23% Other 77% Significant gender analysis (overall) Gender in climate-poverty research: 235 articles in total Non-gender 52% Gender 48% Gender analysis in climate change & poverty articles Token 12% Minimal 26% Significan t 34% Substanti ve 28% Degree of gender analysis
- 12. Conclusions • The climate change-poverty relationship is surprisingly under- researched • Regional and sectoral imbalances needs to be addressed in future research • More empirical research needed on the connections between climate change and poverty • Much more attention needed on social inclusion: how to increase resilience and adaptation • More context specific studies needed to support action • Climate risk management needs more attention • A food systems approach is required • A cross-global comparative approach needed
- 13. Thank you JL Urrea (CCAFS)
Editor's Notes
- Hallegatte et al. (2016) Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty. Climate Change and Development Series. Washington, DC: World Bank They emphasize how climate change is a risk to the internationally agreed objective of eradicating extreme poverty. In their pessimistic development and climate change scenario, a further 100 million people could be pushed into poverty by 2030. They argue that climate-related natural hazards, shocks and stresses will worsen with climate change, and that these shocks and stresses are a threat to poverty eradication. They argue that poor people are more vulnerable to spikes in food prices, more dependent on agricultural and ecosystem-related income, and more exposed to extreme events. Climate change will lower crop yields and increase food prices and price volatility, leading to reduced consumption and incomes. Added to this is the point that poor people have more limited access to financial services and social safety nets and receive less support from friends and family. With less reliable income, with assets exposed to shocks, and with less access to risk-mitigating options, poor people disproportionately opt for low-risk activities; these low-return options then perpetuate poverty. In part because of its impacts on agriculture, climate change is said to increase undernutrition among children. It is argued that climate change adds to the stress on ecosystems and makes them even more fragile, implying that ecosystem-related income could be at risk. Olsson et al. (2014) follow a similar line of reasoning. With high confidence, they state that “climate-related hazards exacerbate other stressors, often with negative outcomes for livelihoods, especially for people living in poverty”. They go on to conclude that climate change and variability worsens existing poverty, increases inequalities and triggers new vulnerabilities. Gender – women are very much at risk…..
- A title (TI) search in Web of Science was conducted, using three terms to cover (a) climate change; (b) poverty; and (c) agriculture and food security.
- A 15-year period of literature was covered: 2002-2016. Note that some climate and poverty papers were left out as a result of the focus on agriculture Some work on links between climate and poverty were missed; as were gender and undernutrition. analysis is based on peer-reviewed journal papers in Web of Science, so does miss some peer-reviewed books and reports.
- Our analysis highlights the fact that much of the existing literature on the climate change – poverty nexus does not go far enough in addressing the linkages that need to be considered, to provide robust, empirical evidence that climate change impacts do indeed increase poverty. For many of the articles it is implicit that climate change increases poverty, but the empirical evidence is in fact weak. Few studies look at poverty and poverty alleviation in any detail, the focus often being on vulnerability components rather than poverty measures. And it is difficult for us to draw conclusions, because of the diversity of methods used and diversity of focus issues. Of the 19 global papers, 11 focus on vulnerability, six on livelihoods, four on income, and one on hunger (some papers focus on more than one of these). There is rather little information on the direct linkages between climate change and poverty. This is also true for the regions examined. All but two of the papers discuss the impacts of climate change in terms of production and productivity, a few including income effects. There are few studies using global integrated assessment models that would allow examination of trade and food prices, and without price data we will miss major climate change impacts. Vulnerability studies can be useful for targeting, but provide little basis for evaluating the effectiveness of different adaptation options in alleviating poverty. Many studies follow the tradition of the climate change research community – as opposed to the poverty research community – with a focus on such concepts as climate exposure, sensitivity, vulnerability, resilience, adaptive capacity and adaptability (e.g. Aguilar et al. 2009; Below et al. 2012; Gbetibouo et al. 2010; Murty et al. 2014; Mozaria-Luna 2014; Ravera et al. 2014; Abid et al. 2016; Ling et al 2015). little consideration of how differential vulnerability and/or resilience mediates the impact on poverty. While climate change may in general increase poverty (or keep people in poverty), climate change is often not the main driver of vulnerability or change in poverty (e.g. Barua et al. 2014 for Himalaya, India; Eakin et al. 2015 for maize systems in Mexico). Furthermore, the relationships between climate change and poverty (or vulnerability) may be counter to the generalisations, given the complexity of the relationships. For example, McSweeney et al. (2011) show how an extreme event in Honduras enabled the poor to initiate institutional change that led to more equitable land distribution, slowed primary forest conversion, and positioned the community to cope with comparable flooding 10 years later. Keil et al. (2009), working in Indonesia, also point to the complexity of the climate change-livelihood-poverty relationship, and the locally-specific impacts. Generalisations are difficult to make.
- This category includes both youth (defined by the World Bank as those between the age of 15-35), and children younger than 15 years of age. Occurrences of the search terms for youth or children are found in 36% of articles (116). However, these percentages decrease if references to children are filtered out. Most references to children or child are in the context of “women and children” with little substantive analysis. Many are in reference to household analysis, with little actual analysis of the situation of children. The number of articles with references to youth drops to 62 (29%) as a result. The research on youth tends to focus on migration for employment, and employment, reflecting the strong emphasis in research elsewhere on youth in the developing world.
- Overall, an analysis of the search terms revealed that 235 articles contained at least two mentions relating to one of the gender and social inclusion categories of youth, indigenous groups, marginalised populations, inequality, or gender – 74%. Of, these, gender had the most numerous references, followed by youth, inequality, marginalised populations, and indigenous groups. Only 23% of articles address gender as a substantive focus of analysis to varying degrees. In this group, research at a minimum level includes the analysis or collection of sex-disaggregated data and gender aspects in the situational analysis. A small percentage (20%) of articles contain in addition, one or more aspects of significant gender analysis (gender as a unit of analysis; gender analysis of results or integrated into results; analysis of gender transformation or empowerment of women). Africa – x articles in total – and South Asia – x articles – or x %. analysis relating to climate change in Africa focuses predominantly on agriculture and income/livelihoods issues, with South Asia also addressing this to a limited extent. In South Asia gender implications of disasters is the predominant theme, including floods and cyclones. Articles in all other regions focus on more on disasters or water-based vulnerabilities than other climate-related topics: including several articles from Southeast Asia, Central America and one from the Pacific. Three articles on fishing and gender are set in Central America and West Africa, while the articles in this group from Central and South America address primarily water-related implications of climate change – fishing and disasters. The two papers from the Pacific with significant gender analysis focus on vulnerability and resilience in relation to food security and flood risk.
- In comparison to related research in other disciplines, research on gender in climate change and poverty is very low level in comparison to agriculture, climate change, and particularly in comparison to poverty research in general (IFAD, World Bank, FAO, 2009; Meinzen-Dick et al, 2010; Morrison et al, 2007; Goh, 2012). The low representation of research on youth reflects the dearth of research in this area in general in developing regions. It also focuses on only two aspects of youth research which are recognized as important – employment and migration – neglecting other important aspects: empowerment in terms of status, role, and participation in decision making; consequences of and participation in conflict and post-conflict contexts; health (particularly in relation to HIV); and education as a strategy for poverty reduction and employment (World Bank, 2006; La Cava et al, 2004; Borode, 2011). Analysis of the articles in this review, both in terms of what is missing and what is included, show that greater understanding is needed of the vulnerability of all of these groups to climate change, but more importantly, how inclusion of these groups in research and action on the ground can increase resilience and adaptation. A search for literature reviews on youth in the developing world produced a small number of references, mostly from the late 90s to mid 2000s with some exceptions and mostly United Nations and international development bank publications (E.g. Knowles and Behrman, 2005; World Bank, 2006; Lopez Cardozo et al, 2015). Food system approach: diets and nutrition, food trade and access, agricultural production areas, and cultures of consumption and waste.