Scaling up climate change adaptation & mitigation practices

Human beings have been adapting to the variable climate around them for centuries. Worldwide local climate variability can influence peoples’ decisions with consequences for their social, economic, political and personal conditions, and effects on their lives and livelihoods. The effects of climate change imply that the local climate variability that people have previously experienced and have adapted to is changing and changing at relatively great speed (UNFCCC, 2007). Climate change is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level (IPCC, 2007). As indicated in the report of IPCC global warming will continue and accelerate. The best estimates indicate that the Earth could warm by 3° C by 2100 (IPCC, 2007). Continuing climate change, at current rates, will pose increasingly severe challenges to development. Left unmanaged, it will compromise the well-being of current and future generations. It becomes recognized as a global sustainable development challenge with strong social, economic and environmental dimensions (World Bank, 2010).