Climate Change as a constraint to international development: Evidence from developing economies

Abstract

This paper aims at assessing to which degree climate change limits the outcome of international development in the developing economies. It is a move to determine major channels through which climate risks diminish development towards global development among them being: reduction of productivity, lack of resources, and financial pressures. It is also this subject of study that how adaptive governance and international aid can overcome these constraints. The study adopts the mixed methods strategy, balancing cross country econometric analysis and qualitative case studies in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. The panel regression models are used to analyze quantitative data concerning the climate variability, the GDP growth, and the human development indicators. The qualitative assessment based on policy documents and interviews with experts gives contextual information on the strategy of adaptation and institutional response. The results tend to indicate that climate shock and development indicators including income growth, access to education, and health outcomes are statistically significant with a negative relationship. The paper can also prove that that countries that possess higher adaptive capacity and institutional resilience are less severely hit by setbacks in development.