Combating climate change: Dismantling the spatial and temporal assumptions of the core and periphery

Abstract

In this commentary, I examine the implications of core periphery relationship with respect to challenges, implications, and responses to climate change. As authors in the special issue have demonstrated with respect to economic growth, the core-periphery dynamic is challenged in climate change. Climate change is disrupting the fundamental conditions of human life. Its impacts are also profoundly unequal and the risks of climate change compound. Climate change exacerbates existing inequities by placing further burdens on communities that are already vulnerable. While some individuals and communities will have resources to adapt to or avoid the worst impacts of climate change, others will find their homes becoming uninhabitable, their livelihoods vanishing, and their health and security threatened. Sea level rise alone will create up to one billion climate refugees by the year 2100.