Climate Change is responsible for 300,000 deaths a year according to a Global Humanitarian Forum’s (GHF) recent Human Impact Report. On 29th May, Kofi A. Annan, President of the GHF, introduced a major new report about the human impact of climate change.
The Human Impact Report: Climate Change – The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis, the first ever comprehensive report looking at the human impact of climate change, produced by Dalberg Global Development Advisers, estimates that 325 million people are seriously affected by climate change. The report also found that there is an economic impact of $125 billion per year from climate change, which is more than the individual GDP of 73% of the world’s countries.
By 2030, worldwide deaths will reach almost 500,000 per year; with up to 660 million people affected and an annual economic cost around $340 billion. Most of the impact will occur in developing countries and will affect an estimated 10% of the world’s population.
The report was issued on the eve of discussions of a new UN International Climate Agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The Bonn talks will culminate at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. The report was reviewed by leading international experts, including Rajendra Pachauri of the IPCC, Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, and Barbara Stocking of Oxfam.
Mr. Annan, former head of the UN commented, “Climate change is a silent human crisis. Yet it is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time. Already today, it causes suffering to hundreds of millions of people most of whom are not even aware that they are victims of climate change. We need an international agreement to contain climate change and reduce its widespread suffering.“
The report attempts to put a human context on climate change impact and is a call to negotiators at Copenhagen to agree the world’s most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated. According to Annan, the alternative is to, “…continue to accept mass starvation, mass sickness and mass migration on an ever growing scale.”
The report highlights that a majority of the world’s population does not have the capacity to cope with the impact of climate change without suffering potentially irreversible loss of wellbeing and risk of loss of life. The populations most at risk are over half a billion people in some of the poorest areas of the world, in particular, the semi-arid dry land belt countries from the Sahara to the Middle East and Central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, South and South East Asia, and small island developing states.
Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam and GHF Board Member explained, “Climate change is a human crisis which threatens to overwhelm the humanitarian system and turn back the clock on development. It is also a gross injustice - poor people in developing countries bear over 90% of the burden - through death, disease, destitution and financial loss - yet are least responsible for creating the problem. Despite this, funding from rich countries to help the poor and vulnerable adapt to climate change is not even 1% of what is needed. This glaring injustice must be addressed at Copenhagen in December."
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