Shifting seasons are destroying harvests and causing widespread hunger, and that is just one of the multiple climate change impacts taking their toll on the world’s poorest people, according to a recent report from Oxfam International. Oxfam is a U.K.-based confederation of 14 like-minded organizations working together and with partners and allies around the world to bring about lasting change.
The report, titled Suffering the Science – Climate Change, People and Poverty, warns that without immediate action 50 years of development gains in poor countries will be permanently lost. It says that climate-related hunger could be the defining human tragedy of this century.
Suffering the Science outlines evidence of how climate change is affecting every issue linked to poverty and development today including:
HUNGER: Farmers from Bangladesh to Uganda and Nicaragua, no longer able to rely on generations of farming experience, are facing failed harvest after failed harvest.
AGRICULTURE: Rice and maize, two of the world’s most important crops on which hundreds of millions depend, particularly in Asia, the Americas and Africa, face significant drops in yields even under mild climate change scenarios. Maize yields are forecast to drop by 15 per cent or more by 2020 in much of sub-Saharan Africa and in most of India. One estimate puts the loss to Africa at $2 Billion a year.
HEALTH: Diseases such as malaria and dengue fever that were once geographically bound are creeping to new areas where populations lack immunity or the knowledge and healthcare infrastructure to cope with them. It is estimated that climate change has contributed to an average of 150,000 more deaths from disease per year since the 1970s, with over half of those happening in Asia.
LABOR: Rising temperatures will make it impossible for people to work at the same rate on hot summer days without serious health impacts with huge ramifications for laborers paid by the hour and the wider economy. Tropical cities such as Delhi could see a drop in worker productivity of as much as 30 percent.
WATER: Water supplies are becoming so acutely challenged that several major cities including Kathmandu and La Paz which are dependent on the Himalayan and Andes glaciers may soon be unable to function.
DISASTERS: Disasters including mega fires and storms are on the rise and could triple by 2030. A record $165 billion was lost in the 2005 hurricane season alone and the insurance industry says that climate change will make the situation worse, particularly for poor people who have no access to insurance.
DISPLACEMENT: An estimated 26 million people have been displaced as a direct result of climate change and each year a million more are displaced by weather related events. Island communities from Vanuatu, Tuvalu and the Bay of Bengal have already been forced to move because of sea level rise.
Oxfam’s report says that it is a bitter irony that in temperate zones the impacts of climate change will be milder — at least initially. However in the tropics, where the bulk of humanity lives, many of them in poverty, climate change is beginning to play out more erratically and harmfully.
“Climate change is the central poverty issue of our times,” said Jeremy Hobbs, Oxfam International Executive Director. “Climate change is happening today and the world’s poorest people, who already face a daily struggle to survive, are being hit hardest. The evidence is right in front of our eyes. The human cost of climate change is as real as any redundancy or repossession notice.”
Download the report: Suffering the Science – Climate Change, People and Poverty
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