COORDINATORS
Laura Rudert, Lisa Renstrom, and Bidisha Bhattacharyya, Harvard Kennedy School

Climate change is one of the most formidable challenges facing the field of development today. Due to existing vulnerabilities from poverty and poor geographic location, the world’s poorest countries and people will bear the brunt of the climate crisis due to their limited capacity to mitigate and adapt to changing global weather patterns. For example, when natural disasters strike poor communities in the developing world, assets built up over years are wiped out, children are exposed to malnutrition, and conflicts erupt over scarce resource. In the developed world, the change in global weather patterns has resulted in economic losses measured in the billions of US dollars. In the developing world, the impact of climate change has resulted in greater losses of life.

It is evident that as natural disasters increase in the developing world, the food supply and security of the poor and landless will be at great risk. A CGIAR research report finds that “projected temperature increases and shifts in rainfall patterns are likely to decrease growing periods in sub-Saharan Africa by more than 20 percent, with some of the world’s poorest nations in East and Central Africa at greatest risk.” In light of these changes, the most recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the 2007 UNDP Human Development Report emphasize the importance of strategies that involves both mitigation and adaptation. Anticipating and planning for climate change is critical if the world wishes to avert declines in major food crops, increased human suffering and global inequality. Moreover, without collaborative effort, the imbalance in capacity between developed and developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change threatens to become another source of inequality, poverty and insecurity amongst and within nations. The world therefore faces two: 1) mitigation and/or 2) adaptation, both of which are necessary to minimize the adverse effects of climate change on the developing world.

Main Questions:

1. How is climate change exacerbating existing vulnerabilities and creating new vulnerabilities in developing countries?

2. What development paradigms are no longer feasible?

3. How is climate change affecting livelihoods of the poorest communities in developing countries?

4. What types of interventions are necessary now, both on the local level and national/international levels?

COORDINATOR
Federico Ortega, Harvard Kennedy School

Developing tourism appears be an excellent economic driver and poverty reduction strategy. The industry is labor intensive, has significant links to the rest of the economy and is particularly prone to be developed in remote (usually poor) areas. However it is also an industry with delicate interests that requires great coordination between the private and public sectors, as well as local communities. This panel will bring together a diverse set of industry experts, policy makers and academics from around the world to discuss the ways in which developing tourism is (and could be) used as an inclusive development tool and the different strategies to achieve it.

COORDINATORS
Katherine Jordan and Nora Ferm, Harvard Kennedy School

Women comprise the majority of the workforce in many non-traditional agricultural export (NTAE) industries and manufacturing plants in regions like Latin America and Asia. The economic empowerment of women can contribute to gender equality and poverty reduction. At the same time, there is growing concern about the feminization of working poverty. Working conditions may be unsafe and substandard, contracts may be temporary or seasonal, and salaries are often low. Gender discrimination and low education levels among women workers prevent them from advancing in the hierarchy even after gaining decades of experience. How can NGOs, international organizations, and governments ensure that women workers in developing countries not only contribute to economic growth and gender equality, but also enjoy safe and decent work, and living wages?

COORDINATOR
Gang Peng, Harvard Kennedy School Asia Fellow

The objective of this research is to discuss this issue using China as an example, focusing on the measurement of poverty amid plenty, factors and mechanisms which lead to this kind poverty and further deteriorate it, impacts of globalization on poverty, effects of this poverty to the economic development, and effective anti-poverty policies. The concept of poverty amid plenty is different from the traditional concept of poverty and it is rather a very common case in the whole world. This type of poverty, which occurs during the period of rapid economic growth in an economy in the globalization process, can be defined as "poverty along with development", or "poverty in prosperity", or, using the word in Word Bank's document, "poverty amid plenty". The speakers will talk about the achievements of China's economic development and reducing poverty in recent years; the concept and situation of the poverty amid plenty in China; characteristics and causes of the poverty amid plenty in China; and policies and countermeasures research of reducing poverty amid plenty in China.