Addressing the climate change and poverty nexus

16/11/2022

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Climate variability and change is expected to worsen poverty and disproportionately impact already vulnerable groups and those facing inequality, notably women and Indigenous peoples. Coastal systems and SIDS are particularly prone to climate risks, and people who live and work in coastal communities often experience high levels of climate-related vulnerability associated with the combined effect of high levels of exposure and sensitivity to climate variability, sparse support infrastructure, and lack of adaptation options.

This course is intended to strengthen awareness, motivation, understanding and capacity among regional and national partners (IGOs, governments, NGOs, sectoral organizations) to implement climate and poverty reduction actions, with specific consideration of the fisheries sector, and in a more integrated, cohesive way, delivering co-benefits to the achievement of the Paris Agreement Targets and SDGs.

The course material has been developed as part of FAO Project Assist and enhance partner countries’ institutional capacities to make available, implement and monitor social protection programmes, including shock-responsive and gender-sensitive social protection for fishers and fish-workers (GCP /GLO/352/NOR BABY04), to support addressing the climate-poverty nexus in the Caribbean, in collaboration with the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES) and the Global Institute for Climate-Smart and Resilient Development (GICSRD) of The University of the West Indies (UWI).

Course details

Name: Addressing the climate change and poverty nexus

Code: ACCPN202211_A

Language:English

Course type: salfe-paced course

Duration of the course: 20 chronological hours

Start of course: November 16, 2022

Intended audience:

A range of state and non-state professionals working on fisheries, aquaculture, climate change and poverty to achieve resilience. They play roles in reducing poverty, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and resource management to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Those involved in projects, plans and programmes from formulation to evaluation at any level of governance are especially encouraged to participate. This includes policy-makers and advisers, planners, administrators, technical officers, researchers, private sector practitioners, members of civil society and community-based organizations. Women, young people and persons associated with vulnerable groups will find the course useful.

General objective:

The overarching purpose of the course is to increase awareness and understanding of how climate change and poverty interact as well to improve approaches to addressing them by: 

• Introducing a set of useful tools [for addressing climate change and poverty] using more integrated, multi-sectoral approaches
• Building capacity among policy-makers, implementing agencies and others working with coastal communities, fisheries and aquaculture

The course contributes to building national capacity to support national and local initiatives that contribute to reducing the exposure and vulnerability and enhancing the resilience of the poor and vulnerable in coastal communities and the fisheries sector to climate change and natural disasters.

Specific objectives:

• Generate basic capabilities to understand the concept of Family Farming and its relevance as a strategic sector for sustainable development.
• Recognize the multiple roles of Family Farming for the sustainability of food systems and the achievement of sustainable development objectives.
• Identify the progress and challenges faced in the implementation of different policies and laws for the strengthening of Family Farming in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

Expected learning outcomes:

Conceptual knowledge and awareness 

• Improved awareness of interactions of poverty and climate change, as well as policy/programs designed to address them 
• Improved understanding of concepts related to rural poverty and inequality (including poverty measures and analysis, poverty dynamics, and vulnerability to poverty) in the context of climate change and climate-related vulnerability 
• Improved awareness and understanding of linkages and interactions between climate change, poverty and inequality, and the policies and programs designed to address them

Policy analysis skills (climate-poverty lens) 

• Knowledge of key elements to support improved identification and analysis of climate-poverty linkages
• Climate-poverty vulnerability assessment 
• Identification of policies, programs and practices in recognizing and responding to climate-poverty interactions 
• Improved capacity to identify gaps, opportunities and priorities for policy adjustments and/or new policy/programs to address climate-poverty nexus

Applied knowledge/tools 

• Improved capacity to apply a climate-poverty nexus lens in writing project proposals, new policy or review/change to existing policy (mainstreaming climate-poverty)

Organizational attitudes 

• Increased readiness/motivation among participants and participant organizations to take steps to improve the ways in which the climate-poverty nexus is recognized and addressed

Contents: 

• Lesson 1. Climate change, coastal communities, and small-scale fisheries
• Lesson 2. Poverty and climate-poverty interactions
• Lesson 3. Addressing the climate-poverty nexus
• Lesson 4. Building adaptive capacity coherence and integrated approaches
• Lesson 5. Building resilience: strengthening locally led adaptation and poverty-reduction

Better to which it belongs: BP2, BE1

Supervising Officer: Daniela Kalikoski, Fishery Industry Officer (NFIFL), FAO Rome

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