The world's climate is changing and will continue to change into the coming century at rates projected to be unprecedented in recent human history. The risks associated with these changes are real but highly uncertain. Societal vulnerability to the risks associated with climate change may exacerbate ongoing social and economic challenges, particularly for those parts of societies dependent on resources that are sensitive to changes in climate. Risks are apparent in agriculture, fisheries and many other components that constitute the livelihood of rural populations in developing countries. In this paper we explore the nature of risk and vulnerability in the context of climate change and review the evidence on present-day adaptation in developing countries and on coordinated international action on future adaptation. We argue that all societies are fundamentally adaptive and there are many situations in the past where societies have adapted to changes in climate and to similar risks. But some sectors are more sensitive and some groups in society more vulnerable to the risks posed by climate change than others. Yet all societies need to enhance their adaptive capacity to face both present and future climate change outside their experienced coping range. The challenges of climate change for development are in the present. Observed climate change, present-day climate variability and future expectations of change are changing the course of development strategies -development agencies and governments are now planning for this adaptation challenge. The primary challenge, therefore, posed at both the scale of local natural resource management and at the scale of international agreements and actions, is to promote adaptive capacity in the context of competing sustainable development objectives.

The resilience concept requires greater attention to human livelihoods if it is to address the limits to adaptation strategies and the development needs of the planet's poorest and most vulnerable people. Although the concept of resilience is increasingly informing research and policy, its transfer from ecological theory to social systems leads to weak engagement with normative, social and political dimensions of climate change adaptation. A livelihood perspective helps strengthen resilience thinking by placing greater emphasis on human needs and their agency, empowerment and human rights, and considering adaptive livelihood systems in the context of wider transformational changes. Navigating the resilience renaissance Resilience has become a popular research and policy concept within climate change adaptation and development contexts 1. Emerging from a wide range of disciplines 2 , resilience in policy-making has often been based on the property of systems to bounce back to normality, drawing on engineering concepts 3. This implies the return of the functions of an individual, household, community or ecosystem to previous conditions, with as little damage and disruption as possible following shocks and stresses. This stable-equilibrium view has been challenged by research on linked social-ecological systems (SES), which emphasizes non-linear change, the inevitability of uncertainty and surprise (which may destabilize attempts to manage the capacity of systems to cope with change), and interrelationships and dynamism of multiple cross-scale systems 4. Crucially, resilience is increasingly providing an integrative 'boundary concept' that brings together those interested in tackling a range of shocks and stresses, including food security, social protection, conflict and disasters 5. This perspective article argues that three key areas linked to livelihood approaches can help to overcome the challenges of employing resilience thinking in order to inform improved

The close linkages between climate change adaptation and development have led to calls for addressing the two issues in an integrated way. 'Mainstreaming' climate information, policies and measures into ongoing development planning and decision-making has been proposed as one solution, making a more sustainable, effective and efficient use of resources than designing and managing climate policies separately from ongoing activities. But what does mainstreaming look like in practice? This paper reviews the process of mainstreaming in Bangladesh, one of the countries that has made significant progress on adaptation planning and mainstreaming. The paper begins by making the case for mainstreaming, by exploring linkages and trade-offs between adaptation and development and reviewing the literature on mainstreaming. Second, it considers how to implement mainstreaming in practice, reviewing an existing four-step framework. Examining this framework against the plethora of mainstreaming experiences in Bangladesh, the paper considers how the framework can be used as a tool to review progress on mainstreaming in Bangladesh. The paper concludes that while the framework is useful for considering some of the preconditions necessary for mainstreaming, experiences in Bangladesh reflect a much more complex patchwork of processes and stakeholders that need to be taken into consideration in further research.