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Climate change will affect poor countries the most { April 10 2007 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.coloradodaily.com/articles/2007/04/11/news/beyond_boulder/news2.txthttp://www.coloradodaily.com/articles/2007/04/11/news/beyond_boulder/news2.txt
The poor will suffer
By MICHAEL CASEY AP Environmental Writer
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 9:08 PM MDT
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Warming temperatures could result in food shortages for 130 million people across Asia by 2050 and cause potentially catastrophic problems in Africa, wiping out one of the continent's staple crops altogether, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.
Climate change threatens the ecologically rich Great Barrier Reef and sub-Antarctic islands, and could melt the snow on Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A summary of the full, 1,572-page document written and reviewed by 441 scientists was released Friday. The latest document, the second of four reports including the summary, tries to explain how global warming is changing life around the world, region by region.
Further details were unveiled Tuesday in regional news conferences.
The report suggests that a 3.6-degree increase in mean air temperature could decrease rain-fed rice yields by 5 percent to 12 percent in China. In Bangladesh, rice production may fall by just under 10 percent and wheat by a third by the year 2050.
The drops in yields combined with rising populations could put close to 50 million extra people at risk of hunger by 2020, 132 million by 2050 and 266 million by 2080, the report said.
Water shortages will also become more common in India as the Himalayan glaciers decline, while nearly 100 million people annually will face the risk of floods from seas that are expected to rise in Asia between 0.04 inches to 0.12 inches annually, slightly higher than the global average.
“Unchecked climate change will be an environmental and economic catastrophe but above all it will be a human tragedy,” Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said in a statement.
“It is absolutely vital that international action is taken now to avoid dangerous climate change,” he said. “Otherwise the consequences for food and water security in Asia, as for many other parts of the world are too alarming to contemplate.”
The report said Africa is the continent most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The fallout from a swiftly warming planet - extreme weather, flooding, outbreaks of disease - will only exacerbate troubles in the world's poorest continent, said Anthony Nyong, one of the lead authors.
The panel predicts that sea levels could rise on the eastern Africa coast, leading to flooding that could cost 10 percent of each country's gross domestic product. East African countries have limited or no budgets for dealing with such emergencies and usually depend on foreign aid.
Wheat, a staple in Africa, may disappear from the continent by the 2080s, the report said.
Africa has “the least responsibility for climate change and yet it is perversely the continent with the most at risk if greenhouse gases are not cut,” Steiner said.
But Nyong said African governments cannot rely on outside aid to fix problems from climate change. “It is dangerous ... for African governments to continually and perpetually depend on aid for such things that have such a major impact on what we do,” he told reporters in Nairobi, Kenya.
In Europe's Mediterranean region, climate change will sap electric power generation, reverse long-standing tourism trends, raise sea levels in coastal regions and leave millions of people with water shortages, scientists said.
Mediterranean ecosystems are among the world's most sensitive and will thus be among those hardest-hit by global warming, said Jose Manuel Moreno, a Spanish scientist who helped write the report on Europe. By 2070, between 16 and 44 million Europeans are projected to be suffering water shortages, he added.
For Australians and New Zealanders, the warming temperatures will be felt mostly through more extreme weather.
“Heat waves and fires are virtually certain to increase in intensity and frequency,” Kevin Hennessy, a lead author on the chapter for Australia and New Zealand, said in a statement.
“Floods, landslides, droughts and storm surges are very likely to become more frequent and intense and frosts are very likely to become less frequent,” he said.
In the South Pacific, rising seas are “expected to exacerbate inundation, storm surge, erosion, and other coastal hazards, thus threatening vital infrastructure, settlements, and facilities that support the livelihood of island communities,” according to the report.
While the South Pacific islands will struggle to adapt to climate change, the report said Australia and New Zealand have “considerable capacity” to adjust. Efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions should be launched, although the report predicted immediate reductions would not offset climate changes in these countries until at least 2040.
In Asia, the report calls for mainstreaming of sustainable development policies. It also suggest improving public food distribution networks, disaster preparations and health care systems to reduce the vulnerability of developing countries.
Associated Press Writer Tom Maliti contributed to this report in Nairobi, Kenya.
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