A lot is already known, but action is needed

• The extent to which international efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation will take place at the expense of land and use rights of local people, including of indigenous peoples
• How to balance long-term development efforts to protect local livelihoods viz-à-viz short-term risk management?

 These presentations provided the basis for group discussions which explored the extent to which climate change and the aim to support poor people’s ability to adapt to climate change warrant new policies and types of interventions or simply calls for real commitment to what is already known to contribute to support the livelihoods of the rural poor. The following are some of the points that were emphasized during the group discussions: 

•  Although the root causes may be different now than before, variability and coping with it to reduce the vulnerability it gives rise to have long been salient features of the majority of the livelihoods strategies of the rural poor people. A lot is known about this vulnerability and the institutional and natural resource management strategies that work to support the livelihoods of the rural poor. Previously gained lessons in this field should be applied also in the context of adaptation to climate change. These include lessons from community-based natural resource management, from decentralization, and lessons on importance of the institutional framework for natural resource management as well as the fact that in many parts of the world, disaster management plans already exist – but lack funding – at district and national level. 
• Weather forecasts, taking into considerations climate change, are more important to rural people now than ever, given that experience-based knowledge on how to interpret signs in nature increasingly become an inadequate basis for the decision-making of farmers, livestock keepers, forest dwellers and fishers. This calls for data, institutional capacity to collect and analyse this data, as well as capacity to translate and communicate this data as information that is useful in such decision making.
• While some of the livelihood impacts of climate change might resemble livelihood impacts of other phenomena – although at different intensity in time and scale – some of the interventions proposed to adapt to and prevent further climate change may in themselves pose threats to local livelihoods. Intentionally or not, the climate change agenda may serve as the pretext for challenging territorial and resource management rights of local people, including indigenous communities, and for promoting forced relocations of people as part of risk management plans, etc. There is a strong need for an attentive civil society to closely follow and – when necessary – challenge such interventions undertaken with reference to the climate change agenda. Power relations also matters in relation to climate change and climate change often accentuates inequality and social conflict over access to natural resources.

The next seminar in the Poverty and Environment seminar series will be held on September 30, 2008, and the topic will be Local Participation in Protected Area Management – Opportunities and Constraints – Part I. The seminar will feature presentations and discussion of work-in-progress from the Danish resource base.