Global climate change is possibly the greatest environmental challenge facing the world in the twenty-fi rst century. Although often referred to as ‘global warming’, climate change encompasses serious disruptions to the world’s entire weather and climate patterns, including impacts on rainfall, extreme weather events and rising sea-levels, as well as moderate to extreme global temperature increases. Like most other developing countries in the world, Southern African nations are fi nding it increasingly difficult to implement adaptation activities as a result of a number of barriers. In an effort to explore and identify the full spectrum of barriers to adaptation, the research and analysis of this book is divided into five sections – political, economic, fi nancial, technological and social barriers.