This book presents new research related to climate change policies and effects. It discusses the implications of climate change on issues pertaining to international relations and economic development, and the question of how climate change could jeopardize the international system as we have known it until today. It aims to provide an empirical basis and epistemological framework to discuss the effects of climate change on economic growth, social development and welfare as a global phenomenon influenced by policies carried out transnationally and by national governments. Case studies from around the globe are presented.

The evidence for human-induced climate change is now overwhelming, the brunt of its impacts is already being felt by poor people, and the case for urgent action is compelling. This book addresses the two greatest challenges of our time – averting catastrophic climate change and eradicating poverty – and the close interconnections between them. Climate Change and Development provides a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary foundation for understanding the complex and tangled relationship between development and climate change. It argues that transformational approaches are required in order to reconcile poverty reduction and climate protection and secure sustained prosperity in the twenty first century. Section One provides the building blocks for understanding climate science and the nexus between climate and development. Section Two outlines responses to climate change from the perspective of developing countries, with chapters on international agreements, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and climate finance. Each chapter offers analytical tools for evaluating responses, enabling readers to ask smart questions about the climate change and development nexus as policy and action evolve in the coming years. The last three chapters of the book, contained in Section Three, are forward looking and focus on why and how development must be re-framed to deliver more equitable and sustainable outcomes. This section sets out different critiques of ‘development-as-usual’ and explores alternative paradigms of development in a warming and resource-constrained world. This is an invaluable and clearly written text that uses real world examples to bring to life perspectives from across different disciplines. It also contains chapter learning outcomes, and end of chapter summaries, discussion questions, and suggestions for further reading and relevant websites. The text is suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as those working in international development contexts who wish to get to grips with this pressing global challenge.

Climate change threatens all people, but its adverse effects will be felt most acutely by the world's poor. Absent urgent action, new threats to food security, public health, and other societal needs may reverse hard-fought human development gains. Climate Change and Global Poverty makes concrete recommendations to integrate international development and climate protection strategies. It demonstrates that effective climate solutions must empower global development, while poverty alleviation itself must become a central strategy for both mitigating emissions and reducing global vulnerability to adverse climate impacts.

Tropical forests are an undervalued asset in meeting the greatest global challenges of our time—averting climate change and promoting development. Despite their importance, tropical forests and their ecosystems are being destroyed at a high and even increasing rate in most forest-rich countries. The good news is that the science, economics, and politics are aligned to support a major international effort over the next five years to reverse tropical deforestation. Why Forests? Why Now? synthesizes the latest evidence on the importance of tropical forests in a way that is accessible to anyone interested in climate change and development and to readers already familiar with the problem of deforestation. It makes the case to decisionmakers in rich countries that rewarding developing countries for protecting their forests is urgent, affordable, and achievable.

This book focuses on one critical challenge: climate change. Climate change is predicted to lead to an increased intensity and frequency of natural disasters. An increase in extreme weather events, global temperatures and higher sea levels may lead to displacement and migration, and will affect many dimensions of the economy and society. Although scholars are examining the complexity and fragmentation of the climate change regime, they have not examined how our existing international development, migration and humanitarian organizations are dealing with climate change. Focusing on three institutions: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Development Programme, the book asks: how have these inter-governmental organizations responded to climate change? And are they moving beyond their original mandates, given none were established with a mandate for climate change? It traces their responses to climate change in their rhetoric, policy, structure, operations and overall mandate change. Hall argues that international bureaucrats can play an important role in mandate expansion, often deciding whether and how to expand into a new issue-area and then lobbying states to endorse this expansion. They make changes in rhetoric, policy, structure and operations on the ground, and therefore forge, frame and internalize new issue-linkages. This book helps us to understand how institutions established in the 20th century are adapting to a 21st century world. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of International Relations, Development Studies, Environmental Politics, International Organizations and Global Governance, as well as international officials.

The year 2015 will be a landmark year for international climate change negotiations. Governments have agreed to adopt a universal legal agreement on climate change at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris in 2015. The agreement will come into force no later than 2020.This book focuses on the prospects for global agreement, how to encourage compliance with any such agreement and perspectives of key players in the negotiations — the United States, India, China, and the EU. It finds that there is strong commitment to the established UN institutions and processes within which the search for further agreed actions will occur. There are already a myriad of local and regional policies that are helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build mutual confidence. However, the chapters in the book also highlight potential areas of discord. For instance, varying interpretations of the “common but differentiated responsibilities” of developing countries, agreed as part of the UNFCCC, could be a major sticking point for negotiators. When combined with other issues, such as the choice of consumption or production as the basis for mitigation commitments, the appropriate time frame and base date for their measurement and whether level or intensity commitments are to be negotiated, the challenges that need to be overcome are considerable. The authors bring to bear insights from economics, public finance and game theory.

This book is open access under a Creative Commons license. This authoritative book presents the ever progressing state of the art in evaluating climate change strategies and action. It builds upon a selection of relevant and practical papers and presentations given at the 2nd International Conference on Evaluating Climate Change and Development held in Washington DC in 2014 and includes perspectives from independent evaluations of the major international organisations supporting climate action in developing countries, such as the Global Environment Facility. The first section of the book sets the stage and provides an overview of independent evaluations, carried out by multilateral development banks and development organisations. Important topics include how policies and organisations aim to achieve impact and how this is measured, whether climate change is mainstreamed into other development programs, and whether operations are meeting the urgency of climate change challenges. The following sections focus on evaluation of climate change projects and policies as they link to development, from the perspective of international organisations, NGO’s, multilateral and bilateral aid agencies, and academia. The authors share methodologies or approaches used to better understand problems and assess interventions, strategies and policies. They also share challenges encountered, what was done to solve these and lessons learned from evaluations. Collectively, the authors illustrate the importance of evaluation in providing evidence to guide policy change to informed decision-making.