[Originally posted at the Development Marketplace Blog]

We hear that climate changes – ongoing and those to come – are hitting the poor the hardest and the soonest. So what can we do about that?

Well, adapting to climate change is such an abstract and wide-reaching concept I find it sometimes hard to nail down. How do you actually adapt, especially if you are poor and struggling to put food on the table and send your children to school? I find myself wondering what are the ideas that can help poor people cope with harsh weather?

I can envision France crafting emergency plans for better coping with heat waves such as the one that killed tens of thousands of elderly stuck in city apartments without air conditioning in a recent summer. But I have been struggling to imagine what the Bangladeshis can do, realistically, against the flooding and cyclones that hit them more and harder?

For years scientists have argued that in order to grab the public’s attention to global warming, citizens must be told how the towns, regions and communities in which they and their children live will be affected. Information on local level impacts – the argument runs – makes climate change “real” and should therefore be the cornerstone of public support for mitigation.

Adaptation involves both preparations and responses to climate change impacts. But how does it differ from simply carrying out "good development"? In many ways, adaptation is good development, at least up to a certain degree of climate change. Sustainable development, if achieved, makes society more resilient to climate stresses and better able to respond to climate impacts. However, one of the main arguments we will make in the next World Development Report is that climate change will challenge the current development paradigm.

The difference between adaptation and "good development" begins to show once the magnitude of warming increases beyond a few degrees. The warmer the world, the more innovative we will need to become in our adaptation approaches, as the chances of crossing critical ecological, physical, and social thresholds increase. The world, our environment, and our surroundings as we know them, will be starkly different from what we are used to.

Sea-level rise is not a phenomenon of increasing frequency, but rather increasing magnitude in a persistent and continuous way. The effect of climate change is most palpably felt in small, low-lying island states such as Panza Island, the southernmost island off Pemba in Tanzania.  Farming and fishing are the main means of livelihood. Significant parts of the island, especially the lower elevation southeastern side, are inundated by seawater bimonthly, during the spring cycles and most prominently during the diurnal flood tides. The local residents report up to four feet of water in some areas, which have only become vulnerable in the past year. Previously agricultural land can no longer be farmed. The area near the local school has been flooding for the past 15 years. Salt water has intruded into all the wells on the island, so drinking water has to now be piped in from a neighboring island.