Climate change
Climate Change
We're all affected by climate change, but it's people living in the world's poorest countries who are hardest hit. Besides living in parts of the world that are more at risk from disasters such as drought or floods, poor people are less able to withstand the damage to property, infrastructure and income that climate change brings.
But helping families and communities to develop – and build stronger houses and a better income – will help protect them from future effects of climate change.
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Energy
Energy
Access to basic energy services remains a significant development challenge, especially in rural areas of developing countries. A quarter of the world’s population, about 1.6 billion people, have no electricity to their homes and some 2.4 billion rely on traditional biomass fuels for cooking and heating. They are deprived of a host of modern service made possible by electricity and are exposed to the significant health hazards of indoor smoke from low quality fuels.
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Environment
Environment
Poor countries depend on environmental and natural resources to a far greater extent than rich ones. Poor people are particularly vulnerable to environmental disasters which affect their livelihoods. Poor countries also lack the fundamental capacity to manage the critical natural resources upon which they depend for future economic growth and human development.
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Forestry
Forestry
Forests are of vital importance both to reducing poverty and tackling climate change.
More than 1.6 billion people depend to some degree on forests for their livelihoods, many of them the world's poorest people.
Deforestation generates almost a fifth of carbon emissions. It is the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions - larger than the entire global transport sector. The Eliasch Review recommended that deforestation should be halved by 2020 and that the global forest sector should be carbon neutral by 2030.
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