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WORLD ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SURVEY - 2016 Climate Change Resilience: an opportunity for reducing inequalities

United Nations Secretariat, Department for Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)
2016

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This survey contributes to the debate on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In addressing the specific challenge of building resilience to climate change, the Survey focuses on population groups and communities that are disproportionately affected by climate hazards, whose frequency and intensity are increasing with climate change. It argues that, in the absence of a continuum of policies designed to reduce the exposure and vulnerability of people to climate change, poverty and inequalities will only worsen. To the extent that the differential impact of climate hazards on people and communities is determined largely by the prevalence of multiple inequalities in respect of the access to resources and opportunities, policies aimed at building climate resilience provide an opportunity to address the structural determinants of poverty and inequality in their multiple dimensions.

Climate change’s role in disaster risk reduction’s future : beyond vulnerability and resilience

KELMAN, Ilan
GAILLARD, J C
MERCER, Jessica
March 2015

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A seminal policy year for development and sustainability occurs in 2015 due to three parallel processes that seek long-term agreements for climate change, the Sustainable Development Goals, and disaster risk reduction. Little reason exists to separate them, since all three examine and aim to deal with many similar processes, including vulnerability and resilience. This article uses vulnerability and resilience to explore the intersections and overlaps amongst climate change, disaster risk reduction, and sustainability. Critiquing concepts such as “return to normal” and “double exposure” demonstrate how separating climate change from wider contexts is counterproductive. Climate change is one contributor to disaster risk and one creeping environmental change amongst many, and not necessarily the most prominent or fundamental contributor. Yet climate change has become politically important, yielding an opportunity to highlight and tackle the deep-rooted vulnerability processes that cause “multiple exposure” to multiple threats. To enhance resilience processes that deal with the challenges, a prudent place for climate change would be as a subset within disaster risk reduction. Climate change adaptation therefore becomes one of many processes within disaster risk reduction. In turn, disaster risk reduction should sit within development and sustainability to avoid isolation from topics wider than disaster risk. Integration of the topics in this way moves beyond expressions of vulnerability and resilience towards a vision of disaster risk reduction’s future that ends tribalism and separation in order to work together to achieve common goals for humanity.

Realising the future we want for all : report to the secretary-general

UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM TASK TEAM
June 2012

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"The report begins by reflecting on the experience of the UN system in supporting the implementation of the MDG framework. Building on the lessons learned, the report provides an assessment of the key development challenges to which the global development agenda should respond. It proposes a vision of people-centred, inclusive and sustainable development and initial ideas for possible contours of a post-2015 UN development agenda. It concludes by laying out a possible road map for the process of defining the agenda, including ways of bringing different voices of people around the world into the consultations"

Roads from Rio+20: pathways to achieve global sustainability goals by 2050

PBL NETHERLANDS ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AGENCY
et al
2012

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"This report was written in the run-up to Rio+20, the UN conference that will revisit the outcomes of its 1992 precursor. Rio+20 aims to set the agenda for sustainable development policies in the coming decade, with its focus on a next generation of sustainable development goals, a green economy and the reform of the institutional framework for sustainable development. This report analyses possible pathways to achieve a set of internationally agreed sustainable development goals for food, land and biodiversity, as well as for energy and climate. It explores how environmental and development objectives could be reconciled, in actual practice"

Beyond 2015 : where next for the millennium development goals?

TROCAIRE
2012

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"This report presents a meeting of the Irish development sector that discussed the major issues that need to be addressed in a successor framework to the current MDGs...This report summaries the panel inputs and the results of the proceeding discussion. Part I, welcome and introductions, consists of excerpts from the speeches made by Mr. Justin Kilcullen and Minister Joe Costello. Part II summarises the key points presented by the four guest panel speakers. Finally, part III consists of a synopsis of the main issues arising from the roundtable discussion"
"Beyond 2015 : where next for the millennium development goals?"
Dublin, Ireland
1 February 2012

Eliminating world poverty : making governance work for the poor. White Paper on international development

DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (DFID)
2006

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This is DFID's White Paper on eliminating world poverty. It sees good governance, at both national and international level, as key to the success of development policies and poverty alleviation. The paper commits the UK government over the next five years to support the poorest countries, increasing the development budget to 0.7%; to help build transparent and democratic government; to improve security, incomes and public services; to facilitate international cooperation to tackle climate change; to help reform the international system

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