Social Dimensions of Climate Change: Equity and Vulnerability in a Warming World

CHAPTER 1

Equity and Vulnerability in a Warming World: Introduction and Overview

Robin Mearns and Andrew Norton

Climate change is widely acknowledged as foremost among the formidable challenges facing the international community in the 21st century. It poses challenges to fundamental elements of our understanding of appropriate goals for social and economic policy, such as the connection of prosperity, growth, equity, and sustainable development.¹ Human-induced climate change is widely perceived as threatening the long-term resilience of societies and communities throughout the world. It also poses unprecedented challenges to systems of global governance responsible for both controlling the scale of the phenomenon and responding to its impacts. This volume seeks to establish an agenda for research and action built on an enhanced understanding of the relationship between climate change and the key social dimensions of vulnerability, social justice, and equity.

Unequivocal scientific evidence, marshaled by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Fourth Assessment Report, shows that greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from human activity—particularly burning fossil fuels for energy—are changing the Earth’s climate (IPCC 2007). The Stern Review examines the economics of this complex phenomenon, a detailed understanding of which is needed to underpin an effective global response (Stern 2006); whereas others have focused their attention on its politics (Giddens 2009). As a recent Human Development Report made clear, there are glaring inequities in the distribution of responsibility for the causes of global warming and the distribution of its impacts among the nations and peoples of the world (UNDP 2007). Poor people in developing countries bear the brunt of its impacts while contributing very little to its causes. However, the human and social dimensions of climate change have been woefully neglected in the global debate—at least, until recently (Commission on Climate Change and Development 2009; Global Humanitarian Forum 2009; Roberts and Parks 2007; UNDP 2007).

This volume brings together the final versions of a set of papers first presented in an international workshop on the social dimensions of climate change, convened by the World Bank’s Social Development Department in March 2008 (World Bank 2008), with additional material developed over the following year. The workshop brought together community activists, government representatives, former heads of state, leaders of indigenous peoples, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, international researchers, and staff of the World Bank and other international development agencies to help shape a global agenda on the social dimensions of climate change and their implications for effective climate action. This introductory chapter provides an overview of the major themes addressed in the workshop and elaborated in this volume. It articulates the broad outlines of a research, policy, and operational agenda on the social dimensions of climate change—necessarily integrated with existing mandates in international development—that places those people who are most affected by climate change front and center in the framing of equitable solutions.

Viewing climate change through a social development lens leads us, at the outset, to couch the agenda in terms of social justice, at all levels from the global to the local. The causes and consequences of climate change are intertwined deeply with global patterns of inequality. Climate change acts as a multiplier of existing vulnerabilities in a warming and transforming world. It threatens to roll back the hard-earned gains in poverty reduction and progress toward maintaining the Millennium Development Goals that already have been achieved (UNDP 2007). The global injustice of a world in which responsibility for the causes of climate change is inversely proportional to the degree of vulnerability to its consequences calls for equity and social justice to be placed at the heart of a responsive agenda on climate policy and action.

Motivated by concerns with equity and vulnerability, the policy and action-oriented agenda on the social dimensions of climate change outlined in this volume entails a dual-track approach, giving equal emphasis to both aggressive mitigation and pro-poor adaptation. But it follows from the social justice perspective that the transition to a low-carbon growth path, at least in the near term, should be undertaken primarily by richer countries and in those sectors that account for the bulk of GHG emissions: energy, heavy industry, buildings, and transport systems. For developing countries, the social dimensions of the climate change agenda largely concern adaptation to changes that now not only are considered unavoidable, but are already being faced by vulnerable communities on the front lines of a changing climate. Most of the chapters in this volume therefore focus on adaptation, and on the ways effective and equitable responses can and need to be integrated with existing approaches to development. But there is one major exception. Agriculture and land-use changes in developing countries account for approximately a quarter of all GHG emissions. That fact means that, with appropriate policy support, crucial and highly cost-effective mitigation decisions potentially lie in the hands of millions of poor farmers, pastoralists, and other land managers. Therefore, crafting equitable policy responses to mitigation in the agriculture and forest sector is also positioned firmly on the social dimensions of climate change agenda.

A point of departure for this twin agenda is to deepen understanding of who is vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, where, how, and why. This understanding includes not only how climate change contributes to vulnerability, but also how climate policy and response measures may magnify the effects of many existing drivers of vulnerability. In the short term, the biggest impact on poor people may result less from the changing climate itself than from policies adopted to mitigate climate change. Managing the potentially adverse social consequences of climate policy and efforts to maximize the benefits of climate action for the poor is central to the agenda. These concerns point to aspects of the policy and action agenda that otherwise might be overlooked, notably highlighting the importance of governance, institutions, voice, and social accountability in climate action and response measures at multiple levels. These themes resonate strongly with core preoccupations in the existing social development agenda (World Bank 2005a), but their application in the context of climate policy and action also has profound implications for the practice of development.

A focus on those who are most vulnerable highlights the urgency of the international community’s current challenges to reach a fair and equitable deal at the 15th Session of the Conference of the Parties, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen in December 2009, and to follow through on political commitments thereafter. Such a deal needs to include stringent targets to achieve GHG emissions reductions that would avoid dangerous global warming, generally defined as more than a 2-degrees Celsius average increase in surface temperature above preindustrial levels (Hadley Centre 2005). Given the inertia in the Earth’s climate system and the slow pace of progress in the international negotiations, many people now would argue that such an ambitious guardrail may no longer be feasible (Parry et al. 2008). But owing to sea-level rise, the very existence of many low-lying, small-island developing states is threatened even at this level of warming—not to mention the lives and livelihoods of millions more people living in the Arctic, in the world’s drylands, and in coastal mega-cities in the developing world. It is argued that a guardrail approach to mitigation that would serve the interests of those societies and communities on the front lines of today’s changing climate also serves the interests of the rest of the international community, for whom the impacts may not become apparent immediately.

One track of the twin agenda on the social dimensions of climate change concerns urgent and ambitious action on mitigation to avoid the unmanageable (SEG 2007). The vexing questions are who should reduce GHG emissions, by how much, and by when? What would a fair, equitable deal look like? The equity challenge in the mitigation context boils down to reaching agreement about the basis on which to assign entitlements to the Earth’s constrained ecological space—the ultimate global commons problem.

The other track of the social dimensions of climate change agenda concerns adaptation to manage the unavoidable consequences of changes that already are taking place in the Earth’s climate system. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report warned that, although many impacts can be avoided, reduced, or delayed by mitigation—and regardless of how effective such mitigation efforts are—adaptation will be necessary to address impacts resulting from the warming that already is unavoidable because of past emissions (IPCC 2007). As former U.S. Vice President Al Gore² is reported to have said, I used to think adaptation subtracted from our efforts on prevention. But I’ve changed my mind. . . Poor countries are vulnerable and need our help (The Economist 2008).

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report identified for the first time those systems, sectors, and regions most likely to be especially affected by climate change (IPCC 2007). The most vulnerable systems and sectors are ecosystems such as tundra, boreal forest, mountain, Mediterranean-type ecosystems, mangroves and salt marshes, coral reefs and sea ice biomes; low-lying coasts, because of the threat of sea-level rise; water resources in low-latitude regions, as a result of increases in rainfall and higher rates of evapotranspiration; agriculture in low-latitude regions, because of reduced water availability; and human health, especially in areas with low adaptive capacity.

The most vulnerable regions are the Arctic, because of high rates of projected warming on sensitive natural systems; Africa, especially the sub-Saharan region, because of low adaptive capacity and projected changes in rainfall; small islands, because of the high exposure of the population and infrastructure to the risk of sea-level rise and increased storm surges; and Asian mega-deltas such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra and Mekong, because of their large populations and high exposure to sea-level rise, storm surges, and river flooding.

But in all those contexts, and in many more—even where incomes and adaptive capacity are relatively high—certain groups of people can be particularly vulnerable, including the poor, women, young children, and the elderly. It is these structural and situational drivers of vulnerability that concern us in determining appropriate responses in support of adaptation to climate change, and that form a major focus of a number of the chapters in this volume. At the core of this agenda is the need to understand the different ways people are vulnerable to the consequences of climate change by virtue of their geographic locations, livelihood sources, asset holdings, and social positioning; and the need to understand the implications for the appropriate tailoring of operational and policy responses in developing countries.

Most of the chapters in this volume are revised versions of papers originally prepared for the Social Dimensions of Climate Change workshop in March 2008, and they aim to take stock of the existing state of knowledge in core areas of this agenda. They include the chapters on climate change and armed conflict (chapter 3), climate change and migration (chapter 4), local institutions and climate change adaptation (chapter 7), implications of climate change for dryland societies (chapter 8) and for pro-poor urban adaptation (chapter 9), social policies and climate change adaptation (chapter 10), and climate change and the forests agenda (chapter 11). Chapter 2, dealing with understandings of vulnerability and implications for climate policy, was commissioned for this volume. Two other chapters have been adapted from work published elsewhere. An earlier version of chapter 5, on the gender dimensions of poverty and climate change adaptation, appeared as Demetriades and Esplen (2008); and chapter 6, on indigenous knowledge and climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean, is based on Kronik and Verner (forthcoming).

The volume is organized as follows. This introductory chapter first sets the scene by framing climate change as an issue of social justice at multiple levels, and by highlighting equity and vulnerability as the central organizing themes of an agenda on the social dimensions of climate change. It then provides an overview of the major elements of the twin agenda on pro-poor adaptation and the social dimensions of mitigation, and it introduces the main themes and arguments running throughout the volume.

Part I, comprising chapters 2 through 6, focuses on deepening our understanding of vulnerability in the context of climate change. Chapter 2 leads off with a review of existing theories and frameworks for understanding vulnerability, drawing out implications for pro-poor climate policy. The more integrative frameworks highlight the role of assets and institutions in contributing to livelihood security, and the importance of power relationships under conditions of risk and uncertainty that influence vulnerability outcomes for particular groups of people. Understanding the multilayered causal structure of vulnerability then can assist in identifying entry points for pro-poor climate policy at multiple levels. Building on such analytical approaches, chapters 3 and 4, respectively, consider the implications of climate change for armed conflict and for migration. These are two aspects of the emerging debate and literature on complex social responses to climate change that most merit further research and both of them highlight the difficulty in isolating climate-related from nonclimate drivers of vulnerability. Those chapters are followed by a discussion of two of the most important social cleavages that characterize distinct forms of vulnerability to climate change and climate action: gender (chapter 5) and ethnicity or indigenous identity (chapter 6)—in the latter case, focusing on the role of indigenous knowledge in crafting climate response measures in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

Part II explores in more detail the implications of the social dimensions of climate change agenda for policy and action in a range of priority contexts. Chapter 7 highlights the important mediating role of local institutions in achieving more equitable, pro-poor outcomes from efforts to support adaptation to climate change. Chapter 8 examines the implications of climate change for agrarian societies living in dryland areas of the developing world, and chapter 9 does the same for those living in urban centers. In both chapters, the authors describe and explain the distinct forms of vulnerability to climate variability and change faced by people living in these contexts; and they outline the elements of an integrated agenda to reduce vulnerability. In both cases, they highlight the buffering role of assets and the importance of accountable and representative forms of governance for pro-poor, local adaptation efforts. Chapter 10 considers the role of social policy instruments in supporting pro-poor adaptation to climate change; and it argues for a focus on no-regrets options that integrate adaptation with existing development approaches, albeit with modifications to take better account of the ways in which climate variables interact with other drivers of vulnerability. Finally, chapter 11 turns to the implications of climate policy and action for forest areas and forest people. Here again, themes of equity, rights, and social accountability emerge strongly as determining whether the outcomes will manage to balance emissions reduction objectives with those of protecting and promoting local livelihoods.

Climate Change and Social Justice

Climate change is often described as the defining global social justice issue of our time. It raises equity considerations between generations because actions taken or not taken today will affect future generations. It also has powerful implications for intragenerational equity today, among nation-states and among individuals and groups within societies. Climate change reinforces a vision of a world that is highly polarized—between heavy GHG-emitting countries and resource-poor countries that will suffer the worst consequences. The geographic distribution of per capita GHG emissions and levels of social and/or agroeconomic vulnerability are virtually mirror images of one another; when viewed together, they bear a striking resemblance to the already uneven global distribution of wealth and well-being (Dow and Downing 2007; SEG 2007). In short, climate change threatens to compound existing patterns of international inequality.

However, it is important not to present too stylized a dichotomy between the rich and poor worlds. There are middle-income (for example, oil-producing) countries with per capita emissions equal to or higher than those of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and highly populous developing countries with sharply rising per capita emissions. Countries in both categories also include many millions of people who are highly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. Although it may appear convenient to characterize climate change mitigation as primarily the responsibility of rich countries, and adaptation as the chief concern of poor countries, things are not quite so simple. Vulnerability to climate change, viewed first and foremost as a development challenge, cuts across national borders.

Fairness in Mitigation and Adaptation

Article 2 of the 1992 UNFCCC requires stabilization of greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system…allow ecosystems to adapt naturally, ensure food production, and allow sustainable economic development (UNFCCC 1992, p. 4). This twin agenda on both mitigation and adaptation has been described aptly elsewhere as a question of avoiding the unmanageable and managing the unavoidable (SEG 2007). What constitutes dangerous in this context is a value judgment determined by sociopolitical processes and informed by constantly evolving scientific, technical, and socioeconomic information. But deepening understanding in recent years has moved in the direction of favoring more rather than less urgent action on mitigation; and a powerful economic as well as ethical case for doing so has emerged.

Taking strong mitigation action is both good economics and consistent with aspirations for growth and development in poor and rich countries (Stern 2006, 2009). Although many uncertainties remain, and assumptions on discounting and risk aversion strongly affect the results, aggregate estimates of the economic costs of the impacts of unmitigated climate change range from 5 percent to 7 percent (if market impacts alone are taken into account) and up to 20 percent of annual global GDP (including broader, nonmarket impacts), equivalent to approximately $11 trillion (based on world GDP of $55 trillion in 2007). The Stern Review contrasts these estimates with the expected costs of taking action to cut emissions. The expected costs of reducing emissions, consistent with a midrange stabilization trajectory, are reckoned to be on the order of 1–2 percent of GDP per year, even without taking into account such additional economic benefits as energy access, energy security, or air quality (Stern 2006, 2009).

In terms of tackling the causes of climate change—or mitigation—a social justice perspective emphasizes the need for an equitable sharing among nations of the responsibility for reducing GHG emissions, based on an acknowledgment of the highly unequal distribution of past, present, and projected future emissions among them. This is what lies behind the Kyoto Protocol’s guiding doctrine of common but differentiated responsibility. But uncertainties associated with the inertia in the Earth’s climate system, and the political challenge of negotiating the sharing of emissions reductions among those countries chiefly responsible for having generated the exiting stock of GHGs in the atmosphere and those projected to contribute increasingly to future flows of emissions, combine to make this exceedingly difficult to bring about in practice. Although making the transition to a low-carbon economy will be necessary in low- and middle-income countries as well as in the developed world if dangerous climate change is to be averted—and so in the direct interest of developing countries—access to affordable energy for the poor is a prerequisite for poverty reduction and economic growth in the shorter term. There also are questions regarding the social sustainability of some low-carbon technologies, such as hydropower and first-generation biofuels. Taking all these issues into account, the immense political challenge being confronted in the ongoing negotiations under the UNFCCC is to decide who should reduce emissions, by how much, and by when.

A number of principled proposals have been advanced to help address this enormously complex political question, including the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework (Baer et al. 2008) and the Contraction and Convergence approach (GCI 2008). Fairness in the context of the mitigation agenda has usually been interpreted to mean apportioning among nation-states the responsibility for reducing GHG emissions, according to their respective contributions to total global emissions. In such proposals, emissions are normally calculated on a per capita basis to draw attention to the underlying inequities in historical and current patterns of global consumption and the varying levels of carbon intensity driving consumption. Frameworks for attributing emissions on a per capita or personal basis also differ according to whether GHGs are attributed to the site of production or of consumption of consumer goods—an issue that makes a considerable difference in developing countries’ perceived contributions to global emissions. Chakravarty et al. (2009) offer a framework for allocating national targets for fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions that is derived from a fairness principle based on the common but differentiated responsibilities of individuals rather than nations. All of these proposals acknowledge that developing countries need headroom to increase per capita GHG emissions, at least in the short to medium term, consistent with their development aspirations to reduce poverty, meet the basic needs of their citizens, and attain the Millennium Development Goals. It is argued that such subsistence emissions are entirely different from the luxury emissions associated with consumption by rich people in rich countries (Agarwal and Narain 1991). Although it is true that developing countries will need to join in efforts to reduce global GHG emis-sions over the longer term—and that most of the least-cost mitigation options lie in the developing world (World Bank 2009)—these proposals all acknowledge those countries’ immediate need for breathing space to address basic human development priorities.

In terms of tackling the consequences of climate change—or adaptation—a social justice perspective emphasizes that those whose lives and livelihoods are most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change and who have contributed the least to its causes should receive preferential support. This perspective should be both an integral part of and additional to existing efforts to reduce poverty and attain the Millennium Development Goals. Adaptation measures include long-term planning for infrastructure (water storage, supply, and sanitation; building codes; transport) and land use (flood management, conservation); agricultural diversification, research, and extension (for example, research on drought-tolerant crop varieties); streamlining legislation to avoid maladaptation (such as removing perverse incentives caused by farm subsidies, skewed water pricing, or inappropriate regulatory frameworks for land-use planning); planning for ex ante disaster risk reduction and ex post disaster response and recovery; and social policy measures, including the development of social protection systems (with various forms of personal and asset insurance), adaptation of public health priorities, and support to populations with special needs (including migrants). Such measures need to be mainstreamed into sector and national economic planning, while recognizing the aspirations of local communities and enabling them to adapt. Current approaches to adaptation may be missing major opportunities to engage creatively through institutional partnerships to support the diverse ways that local people are already adapting to climate change autonomously (Agrawal, chapter 7 of this volume).

Many estimates of the total expected costs of adaptation in developing countries have been made recently, going beyond existing development commitments. They vary widely, owing to differences in methodological assumptions and data limitations, the time frame considered (from the present to 2030), uncertainties associated with climate projections at national and subnational levels, and the difficulty in undertaking cost-benefit analysis for low-probability but catastrophic damage events. As a result, current estimates (derived from analyses in the Stern Review and conducted by Oxfam, the United Nations Development Programme, UNFCCC, and the World Bank) range from $3 billion to $135 billion per year (Commission on Climate Change and Development 2009; Project Catalyst 2009; World Bank 2009).³ These estimates matter because they are being used to inform the international negotiations on the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012. From a social justice perspective, such calculations will have an important bearing on the level of international support that will be agreed necessary to flow from developed to developing countries in support of their adaptation efforts when countries convene in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Particular challenges stem from assumptions made about the share of losses from natural disasters that may be attributed to climate change rather than to existing climate variability. In its most recent report, the Global Humanitarian Forum estimates that approximately 40 percent of weather-related disasters in 2005 may be attributed to climate change, rising to 50 percent in 2030 (Global Humanitarian Forum 2009, p. 86). This results in an estimate of economic losses from climate change today amounting to $125 billion per year—roughly equivalent to the flow of 2008 official development assistance (ODA) from developed to developing countries, as tracked by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (Global Humanitarian Forum 2009, p. 18). More conservative estimates using alternative methodologies to generate plausible scenarios still project increases in humanitarian spending on climate-related disasters during the next 20 years of between $57.0 million (a 32 percent increase over current levels) and $2.7 billion (a 1,600 percent increase), depending on assumptions regarding the expected frequency and intensity of future extreme events (Webster et al. 2008, p. 25).

Although considerable uncertainty remains concerning the actual sums likely to be needed, we can say with conviction that measures to reduce the risks associated with natural disasters and with responding to and recovering from them form a critical aspect of the social dimensions of a climate change agenda; and they need to be better integrated with adaptation and development efforts. Indeed, natural disaster risk reduction and recovery in many developing countries is the logical entry point to this wider agenda because natural disasters already form a very real and immediate threat to millions of people.

A Rights-Based Approach to Climate Change

A persuasive case is beginning to be made that climate change also poses threats to the realization of human rights and that the international human rights architecture is relevant in addressing climate change (OHCHR 2009; Orellana 2009; ICHRP 2008; Oxfam 2008; Seymour 2008). Although a specific human right concerning the environment has not been elaborated in a binding international convention, the fundamental right to an environment capable of supporting human society and the full enjoyment of human rights is recognized, in varying formulations, in the constitutions of more than 100 states and directly or indirectly in several international instruments.

Climate change now is accepted as the most immediate and far-reaching threat to the environment. Consequently, there is a growing concern that global warming will affect the full enjoyment of accepted human rights, including the right to life, the right to take part in cultural life, the right to use and enjoy property, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to food, and the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (table 1.1).

A rights-based approach holds considerable promise for injecting urgency and ambition into global climate action while safeguarding the most vulnerable people in society. By focusing on equity and social justice, a rights-based approach offers both a compelling moral and ethical argument for action and a more authoritative basis for advocacy. It also helps give voice to vulnerable groups because, by design, human rights focus on the most vulnerable people on the planet. Moreover, by drawing on a body of human rights conventions, shared international laws, principles, and values stretching back more than 60 years, a rights-based approach could harness well-established technical, policy, and legal instruments in new ways to address climate change. There is a great deal of scope, for example, to examine how upholding important procedural rights—including access to information, decision making, and justice—could help promote social inclusion and accountability in climate action.

Perhaps most important of all, a rights-based approach helps identify duties and obligations. Under international law, governments are required to respect, protect, and fulfill their human rights obligations. To respect and protect rights, states must refrain from interfering with people’s enjoyment of their rights. They also must prevent people’s rights from being violated by third parties (such as by individuals, companies, or other countries). To fulfill rights, states must take action to enable the full realization of people’s rights. This could be interpreted as requiring states to focus their adaptation measures on the most vulnerable communities within their jurisdictions.

It is important that a rights-based approach deal with inequities between countries as well as impacts on rights within countries. Those people who are immediately vulnerable to climate change have contributed little to its causes. They also lack the adaptive capacity to deal with its consequences. As a result, rights-based approaches advocate for substantial additional resources in support of climate change adaptation, preferably on grant rather than merely concessional financing terms, beyond existing commitments. But a rights-based approach should not be viewed as an end-of-pipe instrument, coming into effect only when a right is violated, a victim wronged, and an abuser identified. The best approach to human rights is one that establishes processes to ensure that violations never take place. This is particularly important in the context of climate change because some of the projected impacts will be difficult, if not impossible, to remedy and redress. Highlighting the importance of adaptation, then, is no excuse for failing to act urgently and ambitiously on the issue of mitigation. A balanced approach is needed, paying equal attention to both.

Table 1.1. Possible Human Rights Implications of Climate Change

Source: World Bank 2008, p. 25.

This section has highlighted numerous ways in which climate change must be viewed through a social justice lens. Global inequality in patterns of consumption emerges clearly as an intrinsic feature of climate change as a human-induced phenomenon. It is as relevant to understanding the uneven distribution of responsibility for the causes of climate change as to the asymmetrical impacts of climate change. A moral and ethical imperative following from this analysis highlights the obligations of richer countries both to reduce emissions rapidly and to provide adaptation support to poor countries. Within poor countries, a social justice perspective highlights the need to give priority to the poorest and most vulnerable groups in adaptation support; and to pay careful attention to ensuring that vulnerable groups benefit from measures to reduce GHG emissions, rather than be left worse off because of them. Table 1.2 offers a way to apply a social justice filter in linking the characteristics of climate change to their implications for social policy and action. The examples given there are merely illustrative rather than exhaustive, and are elaborated in further detail in the chapters that follow.

Poor People First: Who Is Affected, and How?

At a broad level of generalization, poor people in developing countries tend to depend directly on climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, forestry, and fishing for their livelihoods; therefore, they are more exposed to the impacts of climate change than are people in the developed world. People living in developing countries are also generally closer to the margin of tolerance to changing precipitation patterns, increased climate variability, and extreme weather events than are those living in developed countries, and thus more vulnerable to their effects.

Table 1.2. Climate Change, Social Justice, and Policy Implications