Adhikari Sudha, M1

ID no: 291710007
Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences

How can climate change become a main stream in the context of development?
Development is about increasing goods and services, increasing access and opportunities,
increasing freedom and choices and sustaining these gains overs time. Climate change, which
is also called global warming, refers to the rise in average surface temperatures on earth due to
the human use of fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into
the air. Climate change can undermine or in some cases, reverse the effectiveness and
sustainability of development intervention but some inventions can unintentionally leave
people even more vulnerable than before to worsening droughts and floods, changing rainfall
patterns, sea-level rise and other impacts of climate change.

There is a dual relationship between development and climate change. Climate change effects
key natural and human living conditions and also the basis for social and economic
development, whereas society’s priorities on development influence both the Green House
Gases (GHG) emissions that are causing climate change and the vulnerability. Whereas well
designed development activities can increase people’s resilience to those impacts.
It is therefore critical to mainstream thinking about climate change into development plans
and program. This is true when pursuing goals that are most likely to be affected by the
impacts of climate change, such as greater access to safe drinking water, healthy ecosystem
or food security.

Climate change adaptation in developing countries is becoming an increasingly prioritized

international policy objective, and one of the key responses is mainstreaming it into official
development assistance. We can integrate climate as one of the mainstreams of development
through the following approach
1. Observe development process from the climate lens perspective;
-Identify the relevance of climate change to a development policy, program, plan or
projects.
2. Interpret the climate data;
- Understand to interpret and use different standard climatic data sources
3. Assess vulnerability
 -Identify factors contributing to vulnerability in a development approach.
4. Identify adaptation options
-Identify a range of adaptation options to adjust or improve planning and management
to achieve the targeted development.
-Select adaptation measures
5. Evaluate and prioritize options using selected criteria
-Develop elements of a monitoring and evaluating framework for adaptation
-Develop institutional capacity for adaptation
6. Identify institutional capacities needed to deal with adaptation as a continual change
process
-Local climate stresses, vulnerability, resilience

Being from a small agricultural country like Nepal, I think that climate change has a lot of
impact on human lives there. Recently, there was failure of maize farmer’s crop production
resulting in huge loss in their profit. After examining the various factors for failure in maize
crop production, it was concluded that due to variability in temperature, the maize crop failed
to produce maize cobs although the plant seemed to be healthy. This definitely is one of the
major impact of climate on agriculture production. Many such examples can be found in
other places of world too. Development is one of the serious desire especially in developing
countries like Nepal, but in the name of development, there should not be exploitation of
nature like excess use of fossil fuels. Issues of climate change and its impact should thus be
incorporated when development efforts are carried out.

References:
1.Integrating climate change adaptation into development planning. A practice-oriented
training based on an OECD Policy Guidance, Training Manual, July 2011, Deutsche
Gesellschaft für International Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH
2.What is climate change? Retrieved from Url
https://www.takepart.com/flashcards/what-is-climate-change