Many internationally-funded projects aimed at combating the impacts of climate change can make things worse - by reinforcing, redistributing or creating new sources of vulnerability in developing countries, according to a review led by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) and the University of Oxford.
Many internationally-funded projects aimed at combating the impacts of climate change can make things worse - by reinforcing, redistributing or creating new sources of vulnerability in developing countries, according to a review led by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) and the University of Oxford.
Despite good intentions and benefits to some groups, the research found, adaptation interventions often had negative consequences for already marginalised communities.
‘The fact that adaption projects are making people even worse off in the face of climate change than they were before is worrying,’ said Dr Lisa Schipper, Environmental Social Science Research Fellow at Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute. ‘Our findings go beyond unintended negative consequences, to suggest that adaptation interventions risk becoming tools for marginalisation and instruments of power abuse.’
The paper, published today in World Development, examined 33 empirical studies documenting projects with evidence of maladaptation, to understand how and why this had happened.
Read more at University of Oxford
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