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Alumni Brighton
IDS Research Associate Richard Longhurst and the Director of Teaching and Alumni Relations, Robert Nurick hosted an alumni dinner in Brighton.

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Climate Change Team
Reducing poverty and promoting social justice in a changing climate

Global Governance

Both climate change and responses to that change are increasingly bound up with a number of global trends. More frequent droughts and floods, together with bio-fuel policies, are already placing stresses on food production and markets. The rise of the emerging economies is driving higher demand and prices for energy and other resources. Both factors are prompting a scramble for arable land, especially in Africa.

These global trends are interrelated in complex, unpredictable ways. They both produce and are influenced by geo-political tensions that make global governance of them very difficult. In areas like climate change, such governance (i.e. the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC) is currently not effective.

Global trends particularly matter for poor people in developing countries. This is because poor people have little control over such trends, yet are deeply affected by them.

Research on this theme focuses on whether and how institutions for governance of these trends can be constructed or improved, in ways that protect the interests and the livelihoods of poor people.

    Global Governance Projects

  • BASIC - The BASIC Project is an action orientated research and capacity development project focusing on supporting the institutional capacity of key developing countries to undertake analytical work to determine what kind of national and international climate change actions best fit within their circumstances and priorities. (2005 - 2007)
  • European Development Co-operation on climate change to 2020 - The aim of this project is to synthesize and understand the evidence base on CC and EU development policy in key areas of CC and development programming and to map out possible future influences on these policy area (2008 - 2010)
  • Linking African Researchers with Adaptation Policy Spaces - This project aims to increase the ability of CCAA programme partners in East Africa to understand climate change adaptation policy processes at local and national scales. (2009 - 2010)
  • Understanding the Political Economy of Low Carbon and Climate Resilient Development - Despite the impasse at Copenhagen conference of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), significant sums of money will be made available under a post-Kyoto framework for climate change adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. This project focuses on two global program initiatives, namely the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR), administered by the World Bank through the Climate Investment Funds, and the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). (Ongoing)