Adaptation through poverty reduction

A forward-looking approach to poverty reduction should simultaneously support efforts to cope with the impacts of climate change. This is based on three fundamental premises:

1. Poor countries and regions require strengthening of their capacities to act and, most of all, support for economic development in local communities on a sustainable basis. This not only reduces poverty most effectively, but also reduces vulnerability to climate change and increases the ability to cope with unavoidable impacts without sacrificing human dignity. The essential foundation for building capacity to act is to give the poor better access to facilities that meet their specific needs, ranging from medical care and educational establishments, to opportunities for political participation and involvement and the benefits of product and financial markets.

2. The poor have only very limited means of strengthening their capacity to act by their own efforts. They are reliant on supportive institutions and outside help. Most of all, this means that political, legal and economic framework conditions must encourage and reinforce potential and individual initiative “from the bottom up", starting from people and local communities and progressing via countries and regional alliances to global structures.

3. Sustainable linking of climate and poverty policy will only succeed if people in developing countries and their sociocultural traditions are taken seriously. People never act according to personal values alone, but align their behaviour to their social milieu. Climate policy strategies must therefore be socioculturally compatible. Only then will the people affected take climate policy on board.