ABSTRACT
The adaptation and mitigation demands of climate change at the international level have long been connected to overarching debates and negotiations on sustainable development. The early progress of the UNFCCC lies partly in the Rio Earth Summit, 1992, where sustainable development was popularised as a global policy agenda. As part of this event the first Framework Convention on Climate Change agreement was opened for signature. Old sticking points that have blocked international consensus on ecological and social aspects of sustainable development have also been rehearsed in the UNFCCC negotiations with relative levels of wealth and development legacies being invoked. Beyond international negotiation strategies, the temporal quality of climate change response also echoes sustainable development with adaptation and mitigation decisions today having justice implications for future as well as current generations (Adger et al., 2009). This connection to debates on sustainable development reminds us that climate change and responses are but contemporary expressions of an underlying and ongoing crisis in environment–society relationships. Solutions to climate change associated risk require a re-evaluation of development visions and practice and outcomes, as well as a focus on more proximate drivers of change and risk.
