Development challenges of the future: A review of the literature

The broad concepts of poverty, vulnerability and climate change form the focus of the article; an integration of all the three themes to form an effective ‘development context’ presents one of the key global challenges of the 21^st century. The need for poverty reduction, that is, a decrease in the number of poor and the extent of their deprivation has long been recognised. In addition to poverty, future climate change has emerged as another challenge facing the developed and developing countries alike. The consequence of climate change will impact particularly developing countries, and poor and vulnerable household and communities within these countries. Explicit in the climate change literature and implicit in the poverty literature is the concept of vulnerability, a term that is in wide use with different connotations. A distinct link therefore emerges between poverty, vulnerability and climate change and this link has been explored in this paper.