The fact that climate change has been so neglected by the mainstream development community should not be a surprise. Not only because most environmental issues have yet to be effectively mainstreamed within development policy and practice, but because climate change raises a series of uncomfortable challenges for the theory and practice of development. By not thinking beyond convenient frames of interpretation, we miss an important opportunity to effect more substantive change in preventing climate change from further immiserising the lives of the poor, by critically revisiting the role of conventional development strategies in producing the problem in the first place. The article develops this Argument by looking at the importance of policy coherence in relation to the policies and, by implication, ecological footprint, of bilateral and multilateral development institutions, the private sector and finally turns to the potential and limitations of the contemporary popularity among donors of climate adaptation strategies.
Newell, P
Climate change and development: A tale of two crises
Ids Bulletin-Institute Of Development Studies