Impacts of climate change will have a disproportional negative impact on developing countries (Stern 2007, IPCC 2007). Climate change will exacerbate problems related rapid population growth, existing poverty and a heavy reliance on agriculture and the environment. Developing countries have a much more limited capacity to cope with the problems caused by climate change. This report presents climate change impacts on developing countries and what the European Union can do to minimise those impacts.
The paper details:
- Impacts of climate change on developing countries
- Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries
- Climate change adaptation in developing countries
- Challenges for EU policy coherence.
The authors offer a number of conclusions including:
- Without serious mitigation and adaptation, climate change is likely to have a significant impact on developing countries and the poor are likely to suffer most. The later serious actions are taken, the worse the impacts and the higher the future costs will be
- The major reason that many developing countries are vulnerable to climate change is a lack
of adaptive capacity. General adaptive capacity and resilience is likely to increase with development. However, to take specific adaptation measures a certain knowledge base is necessary - the knowledge base on climate change is often very limited in developing countries
- The European Union should have different focuses for different countries in terms of climate change adaptation and mitigation. For rapidly developing countries such as China and India the EU should focus on mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. For the least developed countries there should be a focus on adaptation
- Greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries are rapidly increasing. However, a lot can be done in terms of mitigation without slowing down the economy; especially in terms of increasing energy efficiency, reducing deforestation and improving efficiencies in agriculture. It is also important that developing countries are stimulated to choose a sustainable, low emission development pathway.
