The challenge climate change poses to achieving resilient and inclusive rural transformation (RITI)

Responding to climate change presents deep challenges to achieving the resilient and inclusive rural transformation needed to eradicate global poverty. Exposure and vulnerability to climate hazards in areas of high rural poverty create an urgent need for adaptation. Poor rural areas and people experience higher limits to adaptation and thus higher costs in achieving effectiveness, as well as greater risk of incurring losses and damages where adaptation is insufficient. Mitigation measures in the agriculture, forestry and land use (AFOLU) sector could impose large, underestimated costs in the form of foregone opportunities for improved livelihoods. Past and current emission levels associated with wealth and opportunity are highly unequally distributed. The constrained additional carbon space to remain under 1.5 or 2 degrees of global warming mandates low emissions development pathways, requiring investments of trillions of dollars per year. Financing currently available is neither sufficient nor provided under the terms required to support a Just Transition. Overcoming these challenges requires building political will through explicit recognition and widespread communication of how climate change response can further disadvantage the poorest people in the global community. It requires revisiting distributional implications of methodologies for prioritizing mitigation options and devising approaches based on equity. Increasing the flow of financing under enabling conditions and integrating development and climate change is an urgent priority. A radical revamping of technical and policy approaches to climate change response and rural development strategies is needed to ensure their mutual reinforcement and prioritization of a resilient, inclusive approach to rural transformation.