From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERfrom this have also undermined the solidarity that previously helpedto ensure the communal maintenance of dykes, thus exposing coastalvillages to climate-related rises in sea levels. 110 In the absence of publiclyplanned adaptation based on broad consultation, private responseswill occur instead and these may well exacerbate the wider community’svulnerability to climate change.Appropriate technologies – new and old – will also be needed forpoor farmers to adapt to climate change, and will require significantnational and international agricultural research into drought- orflood-tolerant varieties of seeds. Social organisation and local landpolicy will also be essential if poor farmers are to succeed in using newseeds. In Mozambique, where climate change is expected to bring bothdrought and floods, groups of villagers have experimented withdrought-resistant varieties of rice, maize, cassava, and sweet potato.By working in groups, combining poor and better-off households andinvolving both female and male farmers, the villagers were able toshare the risks of new practices and learn for themselves through trial,error, and experimentation. These informal associations have started,with some success, to lobby local authorities responsible for landallocation so that farmers obtain parcels of land in several differentlocations. This diversification of seeds and soil strengthens theirresilience to either more drought or more floods.Climate change is the biggest threat to long-term poverty reduction– and yet reducing poverty is essential in equipping poor people todeal with unavoidable climate impacts. As the evidence of climatechange accumulates, the necessity for urgent action to tackle itbecomes undeniable. Climate change is not a linear or reversibleprocess, but it appears to have a number of unpredictable ‘tippingpoints’ that, once passed, could have catastrophic and irreversibleconsequences. It is in no country’s long-term interest to wait untilmillions of people are tipped over the edge into climate disaster.As the Stern Report confirmed in 2006, 111 mitigation – rapid cutsin emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change – is essential andurgent. However, time is not on the side of the ‘indecision-makers’who for years have stalled and delayed international agreement to act.Unless global emissions begin to decline by 2015, there is little chanceof avoiding catastrophic climate change beyond 2 o C – with devastating266