Climate change

The implications for Oxfam's programme, policies and advocacy

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Summary

No one disputes that the earth's climate is changing and that the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased as a result of human activities. The concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are higher now than at any time during the last 420,000 years. The weight of scientific evidence suggests that the observed changes in the earth's climate are, at least in part, due to human activities.

In most cases climate change is likely to exacerbate problems that developing countries are already facing. Between 1990 and 1998, 94 per cent of the world’s 568 major natural disasters and more than 97 per cent of all natural disaster-related deaths were in developing countries.

The latest models of UN's Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPPC - a high level, independent, scientific advisory body) suggest that if no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases air surface temperatures could rise by 6 degrees centigrade by the end of the year 2100. This is considerably higher than the IPCC's previous forecast, which estimated a rise by 2080 of between 1 and 3.5 degrees centigrade above 1990 levels. Without action now to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the earth's climate will warm at a rate unprecedented in the last 10,000 years.

The scenario predicted for 2080 is that:

• Sea levels would increase by 50cm - almost twice as many people as now would be exposed to severe flooding from storm surges - 18 million people. The majority of people who would be affected live along the coasts of South and South East Asia.
• Water availability would decline: over 3 billion people in the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent would be facing acute shortages of water.
• Seasonal rainfall patterns would be severely disrupted bringing drought and floods, dramatically decreasing crop yields and areas like sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and tropical areas of Latin America would face acute food insecurity.
• The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events could increase leading to loss of life, injury, mass population dislocations and economic devastation of poor countries.
• Human health would suffer from a combination of effects. People's resistance to disease would be weakened by heat stress, water shortages and malnutrition. Increases in air pollution would lead to a rise in respiratory illnesses. In these conditions infectious diseases like malaria, dengue fever, schistosomiasis would proliferate.

No one will be immune, but climate change will have a disproportionate effect on the lives of poor people in developing countries. Poverty increases people's vulnerability.

• Poor people live in overcrowded, temporary settlements, which are erected on unsuitable land - most prone to the risk of flooding, storm surges and landslides;
• Most eke out a precarious economic existence - subsistence farming or fishing - and have no savings or assets to insure them against external shocks;
• They lack sanitation and their limited access to clean water, poor diet and inadequate health-care provision undermine their resistance to infectious diseases;
• Their lack of social status and the informal nature or remoteness of their settlements means that they do not receive adequate warnings of impending disasters;
• Relief efforts are least likely to reach them;
• Lack of education and official neglect means they have little alternative after disasters but to remain in or return to the disaster-prone areas, with diminished assets, and await the next, calamitous event.

Date of original publication: January 2004