Climate Change, Sustainable Development and India

Climate change is no longer a distant concern, but a serious threat to development and poverty eradication. The Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change draws attention to the fact that the impacts of climate change will fall disproportionately upon developing countries and the poor persons within all countries, thereby exacerbating inequities in health status and access to adequate food, clean water, and other resources. The Delhi Ministerial Declaration on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, adopted at CoP-8 (the eighth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), also affirmed this: 'Developing countries are particularly vulnerable... Effective and result-based measures should be supported for the development of approaches at all levels on vulnerability and adaptation, as well as capacity-building for the integration of adaptation concerns into sustainable development strategies.' The present study is an attempt to study the impacts of climate change in the context of ongoing economic changes, and how these will affect the adaptive capacity of Indian farmers.