UNDP (2009) Resource Guide on Gender and Climate Change

As recently as a decade ago, discussions about climate change were nearly exclusively the province of experts in environmental and atmospheric science. In doubt about the reliability of available information on the causes and effects of climate change, world opinion leaders as well as the wider public scuttled around questions about how much they could actually achieve or, indeed, whether it was even necessary to do anything at all.

Today, the effects of climate change are felt all over the world and climate change is no longer a theory or a meteorological model that interests only a few people. Because of the scientific work that has been done, more people now understand how human activities are hastening it. There is also more and more recognition that climate change seriously threatens sustainable human development. Now and in future, it affects or will affect agriculture, energy, human health, food security, the economy, and physical infrastructure.