Climate change and development

Abstract

Within the field of critical development studies, climate change raises pressing analytical, ethical, and practical questions. By engaging with mainstream thinking, critical approaches have sought to shift climate change debates from a narrow focus on technical issues towards broader ethical questions around the interface of climate change and development. To do so, the field often employs the term ‘climate justice’ as a way to highlight the inequities surrounding who benefits most from carbon-intensive development and who bears the brunt of climatic shifts. This chapter maps out two key climate justice questions: first, given the universally acknowledged need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, critical scholars ask how the responsibility for cutting emissions should be distributed between countries and how equitable low-carbon development pathways can be formed. Second, given that climate change impacts are projected to fall most severely on countries in the Global South, critical scholars have questioned who is most vulnerable to climate change and how public policies might prioritise these groups. Engaging these questions, the chapter examines core questions of mitigation, green development, adaptation, and resilience.