UN Chronicle - Volume 46, Issue 4, 2012

I saw at one time a leaflet that asked people to come together in stopping climate change. It seems that many are not aware that the climate changes all the time and that the change is not stoppable. Climate changes, however, differ in their timing and magnitude and are a result of many factors, such as the distance between the sun and the equator, which contributes to the heat budget of the Earth, and the difference in the temperature of the equator from that of the cooler poles due to deviations in Earth’s orbit, or variations in solar radiation.

“You know that with a sea-level rise of over 1.5 metres, hundreds of millions of people would be dead. They would simply be wiped out,” President Mohammed Nasheed of the Republic of Maldives told the UN Chronicle just two days after he addressed other world leaders at the 2009 UN General Assembly Summit on Climate Change.

About 99 per cent of climate change casualties take place in the developing world. While economic growth and development are priorities in all countries, the needs in developing and least developed countries are on a different scale altogether. Developing countries are constrained by their particular vulnerability to the impacts of fickle weather and climate. The poor in these countries are at a higher risk to future climate change, given their heavy dependence on agriculture, strong reliance on ecosystem services, rapid growth and concentration of population and relatively poor health services. Add to this gloomy scenario insufficient capacity to adapt to climate change impacts, inadequate infrastructure, meagre household income and savings and limited support from public services and you have a veritable time bomb ticking away.

Inuit hunters in northern Greenland are treading carefully on increasingly thinning ice, while at the same time the key marine species they depend on—seals, walrus, narwhals and polar bears—are moving away from the areas in which they are traditionally hunted, as they in turn respond to changes in local ecosystems. In the high ranges of the Himalaya, Sherpa, Tamang, Kiranti, Dolpali and other indigenous groups are witnessing the melting of glaciers; the same is true in other mountain regions of the world such as the Peruvian Andes, where the indigenous Quechua report that they are worried when they look at the receding glaciers on their mountain peaks. In the Kalahari Desert, the San have learnt to deal with the periodic but all-too-frequent occurrence and experience of hunger and poverty arising from a combination of economic, political, environmental and climatic events. The San, like other indigenous peoples, have had to devise ingenious strategies to cope with environmental change and its consequences, yet they are reporting that the character of such change is now different than many remember. All over the world, indigenous peoples are confronted with unprecedented climate change affecting their homelands, cultures and livelihoods.

While some countries are historically responsible for climate change, should the global community take up responsibility for climate migrants, even if they do not cross international borders? Should there be immigration concessions for climate migrants when they need to or have to cross borders? These are important questions that arise at a time of global climate change.

On a dusty construction site in western China, Mr Tan is just another anonymous migrant labourer. But, the unassuming former farmer is also the face of a complex web of crises threatening global health.

The evidence for climate change is overwhelming. It has been reconfirmed by successive international studies and reports over the last two decades. Catastrophic climate change, which will threaten our entire ecosystem as we know it, is possible, though not yet probable. It is likely to happen if we do not change course and continue to ignore the evidence before our eyes: escalating temperatures will cause a big rise in sea level and the release of methane from the tundra will take us towards a tipping point where living creatures are unable to adapt to the changes fast enough.

Despite the fact that Latin America and the Caribbean have the largest freshwater resources per capita, a third of the region’s population is cut off from sustained access to drinking water. Up until a few years ago, freshwater problems had been generally characterized as a result of inequitable natural distribution, lack of adequate financing for water infrastructure, poor freshwater governance, or a combination of the three. Nowadays, as nations try pave the way towards sealing a deal to put in place a multilateral regime that will stabilize the global climate, Latin America and the Caribbean countries have realized that global climate change has affected freshwater resources of the region with significant consequences to ecosystems and societies.

In a small village in western Zambia, the Lozi king—the Litunga— will call on his people to leave the lowlands and join him in a spectacular ceremony, celebrating the seasonal flooding that will fertilize their farmlands. But in the past two years there have been no celebrations. Rains arrived earlier than usual, leading to devastating floods. The Lozi blame climate change. “The seasons have changed. This is a very big disaster”, says Bennet Imutongo Sondo, the seventy-four-year-old induna or chief advisor of Liyoyelo village in Zambia’s Mongu district.

Almost three decades into the hiv/aids pandemic, there is still widespread stigma, denial and government inaction. There are reports of rising rates of infection in the Western industrialized nations and concerns about the possibility of explosive epidemics in the Asian block; yet sub-Saharan Africa, with less than 15 per cent of the world’s population, remains at the epicentre of the epidemic, with over 70 per cent of the infections worldwide.

The headlines generated by the carbon trading mechanisms at the heart of the Kyoto Protocol, most notably the Clean Development Mechanism (cdm), tell a story of a scheme in trouble. But why has it caused such controversy?

Climate change is one of the greatest global challenges of the twenty-first century. Its impacts vary among regions, generations, age, classes, income groups, and gender. Based on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc), it is evident that people who are already most vulnerable and marginalized will also experience the greatest impacts. The poor, primarily in developing countries, are expected to be disproportionately affected and consequently in the greatest need of adaptation strategies in the face of climate variability and change. Both women and men working in natural resource sectors, such as agriculture, are likely to be affected. However, the impact of climate change on gender is not the same. Women are increasingly being seen as more vulnerable than men to the impacts of climate change, mainly because they represent the majority of the world’s poor and are proportionally more dependent on threatened natural resources. The difference between men and women can also be seen in their differential roles, responsibilities, decision making, access to land and natural resources, opportunities and needs, which are held by both sexes. Worldwide, women have less access than men to resources such as land, credit, agricultural inputs, decision-making structures, technology, training and extension services that would enhance their capacity to adapt to climate change.

While not on the front line of climate solutions, recycling of waste materials, wastewater, and wasted energy is a locally available and highly desirable means of reducing greenhouse gases. One potent greenhouse gas, the methane emitted from landfills and wastewater, accounts for about 90 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions from the entire waste sector. That amount is 18 per cent of human-caused methane emissions globally and about three per cent of total greenhouse gases, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Diverting waste bound for landfills and putting it to good use, then, is an obvious and proven means for conserving land and resources, as we have known for a long time; we can now add the knowledge from numerous studies that these practices also bolster climate protection.

The climate negotiations are entering into their most intense phase. Negotiators are aiming to put together one of most complex sets of international commitments ever. This goal is an ambitious package which can deliver within the short time frame that is left for preventing dangerous climate change. Such an agreement will massively redirect investments, trigger technology transfers and mobilize billions of dollars to help developing countries cope with climate change.

For the first time in recorded history, humans are altering the planet in ways that can endanger its basic life-support systems. We are rapidly transforming the planet’s atmosphere, its bodies of water and the complex web of species that makes up life on Earth. Human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have changed the Earth’s atmosphere, unleashing a potentially catastrophic climate change that can threaten the survival of human civilization. This is real, and it is happening now. As the polar caps and Greenland’s permafrost start to melt, the sea level rises. Entire towns in Alaska are sinking into the warming seas. Species such as the polar bear are on the verge of extinction. Island nations like the Seychelles and low-lying countries such as Bangladesh risk sinking into the ocean. And hundreds of millions of people could follow suit. Indeed, 50 million “climate change refugees” are expected by 2010 and more than 200 million, by 2050—one out of every 45 people who will be alive at the time.

World hunger and food insecurity is a recurring problem in most parts of the developing world. Among the many potential biotechnologies that are available, and the different ways in which they can be applied, genetic modification (gm) of crops demands particular attention. Genetically modified crops possessing genes from different species, could possibly relieve global food shortages. Although initial excitement surrounded the use of gm crops—that they will provide bigger and better harvests for farmers— there are still questions about the benefits of such crops. In addition, the general public may not welcome the creation of “super plants” as a viable option in solving global hunger.

The Earth’s climate undergoes fluctuations and for the past thousand years has experienced periods of warming and cooling. In the seventeenth century, severe and long-standing winters, known as the Little Ice Age, recurred in the south of Europe. One can see frozen channels and snow-covered Holland in the paintings of famous Flemish artists.

For centuries, rural communities in the high plateaus of the Andes have utilized water from melting glaciers that typify this amazing mountain range. But the retreat of these glaciers is forcing the communities to reconsider their livelihoods and ways to adapt. From a wider perspective, the melting of glaciers is an iconic warning to the larger cities in the Andes that rely on glaciers for potable water. Unfortunately for these communities, the source of this particular problem and its potential solution lie far away from their arc of influence due to the fact that local actions contribute very little to remedy this problem.

The formation of the Antarctic ozone hole is a graphic demonstration of how rapidly we can change the atmosphere of our planet. There are many other environmental issues facing us today and we must link them together to understand and debate the under lying causes, rather than treat each issue in isolation. Antarctica is a wonderful continent. Glaciers carve their way to the sea where the waters teem with penguins and whales. Although 70 per cent of the world’s fresh water resides in the polar ice cap, the continent is a veritable desert, with liquid water in short supply. The frozen ice takes on many shades, from the brilliant white of freshly fallen snow to the deep indigo at the bottom of a gaping crevasse. This land of contrasts is where the Antarctic ozone hole was discovered.