ABSTRACT
This applied chapter focuses on the intersection of climate-related disasters and economic crises, drawing on mixed methods data analysis from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It outlines how climate-related disasters and economic crises are interlinked, the ways in which climate-related disasters can drive economic crises but also how economic vulnerability can shape exposure to climate impacts variably for different groups experiencing intersecting inequalities, and finally how both types of crises interact to shape the transience and chronicity of poverty. The chapter recognises the changing role of agriculture, which experiences increasing challenges amidst these dual crises but concurrently can offer a provision function even for poor households with marginal landholdings. However, as this chapter demonstrates, this protective function and other means of safeguarding resilience in rural and urban areas is under strain due to “maladaptive” economic policies that seek to respond to crises but (sometimes inadvertently) end up driving impoverishment.
