As the international community gathers in Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, IDRC will be on the ground to observe and to share strategies on how people around the world are adapting to climate change.
The most vulnerable populations are those with few resources to cope with climate change impacts such as food and water shortages, increased poverty, and higher rates of mortality and disease. IDRC’s response has been to help developing countries adapt by supporting research and strengthening local institutions so they can better prepare for an uncertain future.
Here are just a few examples of the work IDRC has funded:
* In the already parched Middle East, water availability is expected to fall by 50% per capita by 2050. But innovative research has led policy-makers to change building codes to safely allow households to harvest water from laundry tubs, sinks and showers to irrigate their crops;
* In Asia, a striking new map featured in Time Magazine has exposed Southeast Asia’s vulnerability to extreme climate hazards and has served as a call to action by politicians in the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia;
* In Kenya, traditional rainmakers have teamed up with meteorologists to combine indigenous knowledge with modern science to build up climate change intelligence and disseminate it more widely in a community whose existence depends almost exclusively on farming.
For more information about IDRC’s work on climate change, visit www.idrc.ca. Climate change experts and practitioners from IDRC and from the developing world are available for interviews.
CLIMATE CHANGE EXPERTS
Simon Carter
Climate Change Adaptation in Africa
Fatima Denton
Climate Change Adaptation in Africa
Lamia El Fattal
Rural Poverty and the Environment
Dominique Charron
Ecohealth
Sarah Ahmed
Rural poverty and the environment / South Asia
Herminia Francisco
Environmental economics in Southeast Asia
Marco Rondon
Rural poverty and the environment / Latin America
