The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading independent body on climate change set up by the UN, is convinced that human activities are already affecting some natural systems. Their reports state that unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt. Though the climate is constantly changing, scientists are concerned that global warming caused by humans has overtaken natural fluctuations in climate... with serious consequences for people and the planet.
Thus poverty and climate changed are intrinsically linked and one cannot be tackled without the other. People living in the poorest countries of the world, such as Bangladesh and Niger/Mali will be, and are already, significantly affected by flooding, deforestation and desertification. In coastal areas, a rapid rise in sea levels is already endangering people’s livelihoods and homes (and warmer oceans also make for stronger hurricanes, like we've seen with Katrina in the south of the US).
Climate change will further affect the income-generating capacity of vulnerable populations potentially increasing the number of people experiencing hunger (and this year we've passed a sad mileston of 1 billion being hungry).
Humanitarian aid/ disaster response is needed, long-term development too, but working on the causes of the need for aid is most important: that's not charity, but justice.
This post was posted at the occasion of
Blog Action Day with Climate Change as theme.
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