The startling costs of climate change have been revealed. ‘The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis', just released by the Global Humanitarian Forum, is the first global report to focus exclusively on the human impact worldwide, analysing how climate change will affect society.
Currently, climate change costs 300,000 lives and $125 billion every year, a global assessment has revealed. A further 330 million people are affected by climate change.
By 2030, the Forum warns, the number of lives seriously affected by climate change will have risen to 660 million, or 10% of the world's population. The annual death toll would be 500,000, from weather-related disasters, malnutrition or disease.
In economic terms, climate change already costs $125 billion a year, which is more than the total aid given to developing countries. That comparison is significant, because it is developing countries that are disproportionately carrying the burden. Overall, 99% of all deaths attributable to climate change will be in the developing world, and 90% of the economic loss. Since the fifty poorest countries contribute just 1% of global carbon emissions between them, this is a matter of human rights, and not just an environmental issue.
Sub-Saharan Africa, already one of the poorest areas on earth, is particularly vulnerable. Bangladesh is described as ‘ground zero'. The semi-arid countries of Central Asia are also at risk, and the Middle East will face even greater water challenges. Consequently, the Forum calls for a radical increase in funding for adaptation strategies. Aid for adaptation is currently less than half a billion, about one percent of what is required.
‘The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis' has been released to coincide with UN preparatory talks in Bonn, ahead of the Copenhagen summit in December. The Copenhagen summit will agree emissions targets beyond 2012, and is considered a watershed moment in the international response to climate change.
"Just six months before the Copenhagen summit, the world finds itself at a crossroads" said Kofi Annan, President of the Global Humanitarian Forum. "We can no longer afford to ignore the human impact of climate change. Put simply, the report is a clarion call for negotiators at Copenhagen to come to the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated, or continue to accept mass starvation, mass sickness and mass migration on an ever growing scale."
The Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum was founded by Kofi Annan in 2007, and is committed to building international cooperation on humanitarian issues.
Read the executive summary here, or download the whole report (pdf) here.
Other related features on Celsias:
How the economic meltdown and climate change are hitting Asia
The High Cost of Doing Nothing on Climate Change
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Oh please...this has been so throughly discredited, not even Andrew Revkin believes in it...
A little research in the future and even a whiff of critical thinking might help
Written in June 2009