چکیده:
It has become common knowledge that the poor are likely to be hit hardest by climate change, and that capacity to respond to climate change is lowest in developing countries and among the poorest people in those countries. It seems clear that vulnerability to climate change is closely related to poverty, as the poor are least able to respond to climatic stimuli. Furthermore, certain regions of the world are more severely affected by the effects of climate change than others. Generally speaking, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change are urgent issues among many developing countries. For this reason, there exist provisions in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to assist those countries that are thought to be most vulnerable and least able to adapt.
Within the context of the Climate Change Knowledge Network (CCKN), a project on the impacts of economic changes and climate change on India’s agricultural sector is being pursued jointly by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) and the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI). The project is innovative in that it uses the concept of “double exposure” (O’Brien and Leichenko 2000). This refers to the fact that climate change and globalization are occurring simultaneously, and that regions, sectors, ecosystems and social groups are often confronted by the impacts of both processes.