Application of TIIME (Toward an Inclusive Intergenerational Model of Ecology) to Experiences of Poverty

Abstract: Climate change increases vulnerability to poverty and impedes the achievement of no poverty (SDG1). Individuals and communities facing poverty experience climate (or environmental) injustices within and across interconnected economic, education, energy, food, health, housing, transportation, and water systems. Understanding and addressing climate injustices, then, require a comprehensive approach. TIIME (Toward an Inclusive Intergenerational Model of Ecology) derives from ecological systems theorizing concerning individuals nested in proximal systems (home, school, neighborhood) to increasingly distal systems (local government, country) that are dynamically interacting with one another along a chronosystem (individuals' lifetimes and historical time). Calling attention to how individuals and their identities, rights, and experiences are embedded within and across systems, laws, and policies, TIIME is aligned with a human rights-based and whole-of-society approach of the 2030 UN SDG Agenda to “leave no one behind” and to “reach the furthest behind first.” This paper applies TIIME to poverty to illustrate dynamically interacting multisector systems that can deepen or reduce poverty for communities’ and individuals across their lifetimes and historical time as well as attention to inclusive multistakeholder intergenerational partnerships (SDG17) to help address poverty and reduce climate injustices and human rights violations within and across environments over time. TIIME’s chronosystem spotlights the utility and need for scaling up the collection of longitudinal data to provide a window into the cumulative, combined, and interactive effects of poverty on individuals nested in environments over time and allow for better informed and more effective climate action (SDG13) policies and programs addressing protective and risk factors.