SUBSCRIBE NOW

SIGHT

Be informed. Be challenged. Be inspired.

GLOBAL HUNGER: CLIMATE CHANGE COULD LEAD TO “DEFINING TRAGEDY” SAYS REPORT

Climate change

DAVID ADAMS reports…

Changes to the world’s climate are causing widespread hunger in what Oxfam has warned could be the “defining human tragedy of this century”.

A new report by the international aid agency says that without immediate action, 50 years of development in poor countries could be lost.

Climate change

PICTURE: Nicholas Belton (www.istockphoto.com)

 

“Climate change is hitting every issue linked to poverty and development. (It goes) across everything – food, water, livelihoods, health – and it will get much worse unless we take urgent action. But hunger is the big one.”

– Julie-Anne Richards, Oxfam Australia

Titled Suffering the Science – Climate Change, People and Poverty, the report says that climate change is already having an impact in a range of areas with attributable increases in world hunger, the spread of diseases and the number of people affected by natural disasters and that, without action to address it, the situation for the world’s poor is only going to get worse.

Julie-Anne Richards, climate change policy advisor with Oxfam Australia, says the report calls for action in two areas: addressing climate change to ensure the situation doesn’t worsen; and providing developing nations with resources to cope with the changes already taking place.

“Climate change is hitting every issue linked to poverty and development,” Ms Richards says. “(It goes) across everything – food, water, livelihoods, health – and it will get much worse unless we take urgent action. But hunger is the big one.”

The report says there are already expected to be significant drops in staple crop yields, particularly in Asia, the Americas and Africa. 

Maize yields, for example, are expected to drop by 15 per cent or more before 2020 in much of sub-Saharan Africa and most of India. In the Philippines rice production could drop by as much as 70 per cent by 2020.

Ms Richards says that while climate change is not the only factor behind the current food crisis around the world, it has played a role.

“Certainly climate change has played a role and it’s going to play an increasing role,” she says.

“With the people that Oxfam works with right around the world -…all of them are very poor people in developing countries who are already struggling to make ends meet. What they’re seeing with climate change is…a radical change in seasons that they may not have had for hundreds or thousands of years so they no longer know when to plant crops or what kind of crops to plant and as a result they’re losing crop after crop and their families are going hungry.”

The report says the number of natural disasters – mega fires, storms and floods – is on the rise with as many as 375 million people expected to be affected by climate-change related disasters by 2015.

“That’s more than the entire population of the United States,” says Ms Richards. “So disasters are already having an impact.”

Climate change is also contributing to the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, according to the report. It cites estimates that climate change has contributed to an average of 150,000 more deaths from disease annually since the 1970s with more than half of these occurring in Asia.

“Things like dengue fever and malaria are spreading and they’re moving into areas where people aren’t familiar with them,” says Ms Richards. “They don’t know how to cope with them and aren’t familiar with what preventative measures to take…and then we’re seeing that hospitals are becoming overwhelmed.”

The report also considers impacts on water supplies, noting that several cities, such as Kathmandu and La Paz – which depend on water from the Himalayan and Andes glaciers, may soon be unable to function.

In addition, it found that an estimated 26 million people have already been displaced from their homes as a direct result of climate change and adds that a million more people are displaced each year. It predicts that as many as 200 million people could be on the move each year by 2050 as a result of hunger, environmental degradation and loss of land. 

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown reportedly said this week that he had Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s support for his proposal to establish a $122 billion climate change fund for people in poor countries.

“Gordon Brown’s climate change fund is a good step in the right direction,” says Ms Richards. “It’s in the vicinity of the right scale. He’s saying, roughly,…$122 billion a year. Our calculations say $187 billion a year and that Australia’s portion of that is $4.3 billion per year. So his announcement is in the right general direction (and) it’s a good step.”

Ms Richards says that while Australia is unique in that it’s the developed country most at risk from climate change, facing many of the same problems seen in developing countries – including increasing fire days and intensity of fires, more floods and longer and hotter droughts, we currently have the necessary resources to cope.

“But certainly unless we take urgent action, climate change is going to reach the point where it will overwhelm our ability to cope even in Australia and definitely in developing countries.”

She says that while Australia has responded well to the issue on an individual level, the next step is for Australia to show leadership on the world stage and “make it clear that Australia is willing to do its fair share of a global agreement”.

“That means committing to setting ourselves an emissions reduction target of 40 per cent by 2020 and, importantly, providing funding for developing countries so that they can reduce their emissions and so that they can cope with the impacts of climate change that we know are already here and that we know are going to get worse.”

Download a PDF of the report here: www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/climate-change/docs/OAus-SufferingTheScience-0709.pdf

Donate



sight plus logo

Sight+ is a new benefits program we’ve launched to reward people who have supported us with annual donations of $26 or more. To find out more about Sight+ and how you can support the work of Sight, head to our Sight+ page.

Musings

TAKE PART IN THE SIGHT READER SURVEY!

We’re interested to find out more about you, our readers, as we improve and expand our coverage and so we’re asking all of our readers to take this survey (it’ll only take a couple of minutes).

To take part in the survey, simply follow this link…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.