This document summarizes and critiques current global efforts to address climate change through mitigation and adaptation policies and financing. It finds that approaches have focused more on large-scale actions and economic transfers between countries than micro-level impacts and social dimensions of climate change. Efforts have also prioritized mitigation over adaptation and favored large projects over small-scale and community-based approaches. As a result, the most vulnerable populations have had limited inclusion in policy frameworks and access to climate financing. The document calls for a more socially inclusive and people-centered conceptual framework to achieve a reasonable balance of equity in the global response to climate change.