Climate Change Impacts on Development: A note of Oxfam’s experiences for the Stern Review

Overview

Climate change – in the sense of rapid, large-scale and noticeable climate change, unusual in people’s experience – is happening already. This is having important economic and social effects. It is making life more precarious for many people, particularly those who are already the poorest. Yet people are not passive, but are changing their lives in various ways in order to adapt. Climate change has been implicated in a growing number of disasters to which Oxfam has to respond, from hurricanes to droughts. However, this paper looks rather at some impacts of climate change on people’s day-to-day lives in the “development” sphere. It is based on Oxfam experience.