Risk & Vulnerability

The poorest countries and people—those least responsible for climate change and least able to cope with it—will suffer earliest and most from climate change. Extreme weather conditions such as floods and droughts most seriously affect poor farmers in the most vulnerable and marginal of the world’s production systems. In least developed economies, extreme floods and droughts already cause large-scale losses of life and declines in annual GDP often exceeding 10 percent. Climate change will increase these losses if no remedial action is taken. 

Water & Climate Change Extreme Events Climate Adaptation Floods & Droughts

Developing countries will be disproportionately affected by the increasing variability of precipitation and frequency of extreme events such as droughts and floods. Their extra vulnerability reflects their limited resources for undertaking adaptations and their limited capacity for regulating flows in rivers and streams.

Key Challenges
Many parts of the developing world are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of hydrologic variability and climate change given weak institutions and institutional capacity, high levels of poverty, insufficient stock of water management and services infrastructure and dependence of the rural economy on agriculture.

In all countries, adaptive capacity—both social and physical—will need to be enhanced to protect the poorest and most vulnerable populations and ecosystems. Adaptation attempts to reduce the vulnerability of livelihoods, economies, and natural systems and their services to the impact of climate-induced changes. Examples include increasing the resilience of agriculture to droughts and reducing the risk of floods through improved water storage and infrastructure management. Much of the adaptation needed should be an extension of good development practice and be geared to reduce vulnerability.

The Bank supports adaptation investments that reduce the damage from climate change and yield net benefits that are competitive with those of alternative development projects. It can join forces with other multilateral development banks and the private sector to increase the coverage of its interventions. Collaboration with UN agencies and the Global Environment Facility is crucial to provide technical assistance and resources where clear incremental opportunities arise.

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Indonesia:
Climate Change

 

• Estimating Climate Change Impact on Hydropower Projects
• Come Hell or High Water: Integrating Vulnerability & Adaptation into Bank Work
• Balancing Expenditures on Mitigation of and Adaptation to Climate Change