World System Theory in the Climate Change Prospect

A central finding of development discourses on the impacts of global climate change reflects unequal power dynamics that shape patterns of social mobility, and access to social, political, and economic resources across the world. An understanding of inequality becomes one of the most powerful tools that can be used to study global climate change and its impact. It is widely documented that the effects of global climate change is not be equally distributed around the world. Though through employing systematic review method, this article intend to critically review, analyse and synthesize the central aspects of world system theory with the climate change prospect, and its relevance in terms multidisciplinary research, development intervention policies design, and execution. The study finding reveal that these inequalities exist between developed and developing nation will be further exacerbated by the unequal burdens inflicted by climate-related disasters and limited disaster response capacities. One important predicted outcome of climate change in the third world countries is recurrent occurrences of environmental hazards (desertification, drought, food insecurity, poverty and loss of livelihood, unemployment, and soon. Indeed, while bringing new insight and understanding into the development discourses, and social science research will have immense impact for future climate change mitigation, and adaptation action.