UN: Poor will Suffer the most

The poorest and least adaptable parts of the world will suffer most from climate change over the next 100 years, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Life as we know it today on the planet will be forced to respond to the shift to a warmer world. We have to use mitigation and adaptation strategies to face the changes while not forgetting to improve our knowledge basis. Every natural and socio-economic system appears to be vulnerable to climate change. However, it is the least developed countries that are the most vulnerable,” said Professor G.O.P. Obasi, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, which helped establish the IPCC in 1988. “Climate change is a stress that will be superimposed over expected population and other environmental stresses,” Obasi added.

The impacts are expected to fall “disproportionately on the poor,” the report says, because most less developed regions are vulnerable due to a “larger share of their economies being in climate-sensitive areas” such as agriculture. Furthermore, their capacity to adapt to change is low.

The IPCC report, which runs some 1,000 pages, represents nearly three years of work by 426 authors from around the world. The report went through extensive review by 440 governments and experts.

Governments should factor these new conditions into their long term investment and planning decisions, said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The report projects that the globally averaged temperature of the air above the Earth’s surface will rise by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years.

Global warming is produced by the burning of fossil fuels, mainly oil, gas and coal, which emit gases into the atmosphere that form a heat-trapping layer. This keeps the sun’s warmth from being dispersed back out into space.

The shrinking of glaciers, thawing of permafrost, later freezing and earlier breakup of ice on lakes and rivers are some of the changes scientists have documented. Shifts in the ranges of animals and plants, the earlier flowering of trees, and the earlier emergence of insects and egg-laying in birds are other indicators of the warming global climate.

In North America, sea level rise will result in more coastal erosion and flooding, loss of coastal wetlands and a greater risk of storm surges, particularly in Florida and along the Atlantic seaboard. Most coral reefs could disappear within 30 to 50 years due to the warming of the oceans, the scientists predict.

Three-quarters of the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans in India and Bangladesh, could be flooded by a sea level rise of 18 inches, an event that would drive the Bengal tiger into extinction.

Projected adverse effects of climate change include a widespread increase in risk of flooding, with tens of millions of people potentially affected. There will be reductions in crop yields in tropical and sub-tropical regions and decreased water availability in water-scarce regions.

The authors predict greater mortality due to heat stress, and higher exposures to vector- and water-borne diseases.

Said Toepfer, “The scientists have shown us a compelling snapshot of what the Earth…will probably look like later in the 21st century. In addition to minimizing global warming through cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, we need to understand the powerful changes our industrial economy has set into motion and anticipate them. We must start helping vulnerable species and ecosystems adapt to new climate conditions,” he said.

One beneficial side effect may be that mid-latitude regions such as Europe will see increased agricultural productivity due to temperature changes of a few degrees. But this will reverse as the atmosphere gets hotter. The global timber supply will increase and winter mortality will decrease outside tropical areas, the IPCC scientists predict.

But the overall balance of effects is clear. “More people are projected to be harmed than benefited by climate change, even where global mean temperature increases are less than a few degrees Celsius,” the report concludes.

“The new IPCC report has powerful implications for how we deal with poverty and sustainable development over the coming decades,” said Michael Zammit Cutajar, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the international agreement by which governments address global warming.

“No country can afford to ignore the coming transformation of its natural and human environment. The poor and the vulnerable are at greatest risk. This report is a timely reminder that we need to pay more attention to the costs of inaction, and that the costs of action to cut emissions are just part of the climate change equation.” said Cutajar.

“The next step in the United States is for President Bush to support the Kyoto Protocol and propose a wiser and more climate friendly national energy strategy. Oil is not the answer to America’s energy crisis. It is the problem,” said one environmental group.

Friends of the Earth International called on European governments to force Bush to agree to cut emissions.

Frances Maguire of Friends of the Earth International said, “This report shows that climate change will be a disaster for the world in general and for the poorest countries in particular. This catastrophe was made in the rich countries of the North. Governments in industrial countries must agree radical cuts in our use of coal, oil and gas, and big increases in the use of renewable power. If we don’t act now it may be too late.”

For a summary of Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, visit the IPCC website at www.unep.ch/ipcc/. Visit www.grida.no for a series of useful and downloadable climate graphs. Explore official documents about the climate talks at www.unfccc.int. Learn more about the World Meteorological Organization at www.wmo.ch. View information about UNEP treaties at www.unep.ch/conventions/info/infoindex.htm.