Adapting to Climate Change: No Time to Waste

The document argues that climate change threatens to reverse progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly in rural Asia and Africa. It proposes four principles for adaptation—scale, speed, focus, and integration—and asserts that the developed world has a moral imperative to provide resources and skills to lower-income countries to build resilience and reduce vulnerability.

• The author outlines four core principles to evaluate adaptation strategies: matching the scale of response to the number of people at risk, acting with speed because climate change is exceeding predictions, focusing on the resilience of the poorest citizens and their ecosystems, and integrating environment, development, and climate change to manage trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation.
• Climate change poses a significant threat to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with the potential to slow or reverse progress in water and food security, nutrition, agricultural production, and public health. This is especially critical in rural Asia and Africa, where approximately 70 percent of the world's poorest people reside and depend on rain-fed subsistence farming.
• Public health is identified as one of the most insidious areas of impact. Many low-income countries are already struggling with treatable conditions like malaria and malnutrition; the author suggests that international support to adapt health services to climate threats could simultaneously help these nations address existing public health scourges.
• Effective adaptation must be anticipatory and integrated into national frameworks for sustainable development and poverty reduction rather than being reactive or imposed by external programs. While national governments are responsible for implementation, the international community must provide the necessary skills and resources.

APA

El-Ashry, M. (2010). Adapting to Climate Change: No Time to Waste. World Resources Institute. https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-02/wrr-2010-11-question-7-response-4.pdf

Chicago

El-Ashry, Mohamed. Adapting to Climate Change: No Time to Waste. World Resources Institute, 2010. https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-02/wrr-2010-11-question-7-response-4.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=El-Ashry |first1=Mohamed |title=Adapting to Climate Change: No Time to Waste |publisher=World Resources Institute |date=2010 |url=https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-02/wrr-2010-11-question-7-response-4.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{elashry2010adapting, author = {El-Ashry, Mohamed}, title = {{Adapting to Climate Change: No Time to Waste}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2010}, url = {https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-02/wrr-2010-11-question-7-response-4.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }