Climate Change Daaptational Deficiencies in Developing Countries: the Case of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Adaptation is now recognized as an inevitable component of the overall climate change response strategy. For a developing region like sub-Saharan Africa with low greenhouse gas emissions and high vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, the importance of adaptation in climate change policy is even more fundamental. This paper examined a look at the adaptational preparedness of the sub-Saharan African region to climate change. Clearly evident in the environmental strategy and development focus of these countries is lack of recognition of the need to adapt, poor incentive to adapt and low capacity to adapt to climate change. This further exacerbates their vulnerability and has implications for the global climate change response strategy. Unfortunately, few attempts have been made to understand the structural reasons underlying the pervasive pattern of adaptational unpreparedness in the region, neither has there been a comprehensive and systematic analysis of how to remedy this problem. This paper is a contribution in this regard. It also highlights the factors to which international community need to pay attention, if it truly wishes to make its efforts at adaptation more global in scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]