Climate Change Impacts and Poverty: Impact of SAARC Countries in Last Decade

Abstract

Climate change impacts are uncontrollable current issue for every country but the research is focused only on the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries and poverty of them as a result of climate change. Cyclone, flood, drought, deeper penetration of saline water, sea level rises, erratic rainfall, river bank erosion, impact of health, agricultural and food security are arose by climate change and as a result of them economic activities in countries can be restricted or limited to increase poverty. The hypothesis of the research is climate change impacts are one of the main reason for the poverty of the SAARC countries. The research questions are what are the climate change impacts of SAARC countries and are there any relationship between climate change impacts and poverty of SAARC countries and what are the solutions can be suggested to poverty of SAARC countries which are arose by climate change impacts. Main objective of the research is based to find the answers for the research questions. According to the methodology of the research the research is a qualitative research and based on the theoretical aspect statistics and details which are related to the topic. Therefore use secondary data which are published by internet, paper articles as well as books and research of other authors which are relevant to the topic and evaluate that whether climate change impacts of SAARC countries are a reason of their poverty or not. Moreover damages of infrastructure, barriers of urban development and energy development, matters of water management, Impact on agriculture, fishery and forest as well as damage for Investment of healthy economy and education, connectivity of trade and tourism, can be found as result of climate change of SAARC countries. As a result of Climate change will affect the poverty of SAARC countries and threatens the basic human securities because most of these countries have higher parts of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in agriculture and much higher expenditure parts on agricultural food products tourism, trade and industrial activities. However the final output of the research is there are impacts for poverty of SAARC countries as a result of climate change.
Keywords: Climate change, SAARC, Poverty, GDP, Economic activities