Each issue has a distinctive title.

Overview: changing the climate for development -- 1. Understanding the links between climate change and development -- Focus A: the science of climate change -- Part I -- 2. Reducing human vulnerability: helping people help themselves -- Focus B: Biodiversity and ecosystem services in a changing climate -- 3. Managing land and water to feed nine billion people and protect natural systems -- 4. Energizing development without compromising the climate -- Part II -- 5. Integrating development into a global climate regime -- Focus C: Trade and climate change -- 6. Generating the funding needed for mitigation and adaptation -- 7. Accelerating innovation and technology diffusion -- 8. Overcoming behavioral and institutional inertia.

This report explores how public policy can change to better help people cope with new or worsened risks, how land and water management must adapt to better protect a threatened natural environment while feeding an expanding and more prosperous population, and how energy systems will need to be transformed. The authors examine how to integrate development realities into climate policy - in international agreements, in instruments to generate carbon finance, and in steps to promote innovation and the diffusion of new technologies. The report is an urgent call for action, both for developing countries that strive to ensure policies are adapted to the realities and dangers of a hotter planet, and for high-income countries that need to undertake ambitious mitigation while supporting developing countries' efforts.