Global
warming will hit poorer countries hardest, research finds
Tropical
regions likely to suffer biggest increase in hot days and extreme
weather because of climate change, say scientists
Fiona
Harvey
Tuesday
17 May 2016 00.49 BST
New evidence that
poorer countries will suffer the worst effects of climate change has
shown that the number of hot days in tropical developing countries is
likely to increase markedly as global warming takes hold.
It has long been
expected that poor people would bear the brunt of climate change,
largely because so many more of the world’s poorest live in
tropical latitudes whereas, wealthier people tend to live in more
temperate regions.
This is inverse to
the generally accepted responsibility for climate change, which falls
mainly on rich countries that benefited early on from industry, and
thus have historically high emissions, compared with poorer countries
that have only begun catching up in the past few decades.
It was only in 2014
that China’s per capita emissions caught up with those of people in
the EU, even after years of above-average economic growth in China.
Those living in the
poorest countries also have the most to lose, as so many depend on
agriculture, which is likely to be badly affected by temperature
rises and an increase in droughts, heatwaves and potential changes to
rainfall that may lead to recurrent patterns of floods, droughts and
higher intensity storms.
The study, led by
the University of East Anglia, is the first to examine the link
between cumulative carbon dioxide emissions and more frequent hot
days.
Manoj Joshi of the
UEA School of Environmental Sciences said: “Many of the poorest
people in the world live in tropical latitudes, while many of the
world’s wealthiest people live in mid-latitude climates. We know
that low-latitude regions have much less variability in day-to-day
temperatures when compared with the mid-latitudes, which means the
signal of climate change emerges quite quickly, and because of this
the frequency of extreme hot days increases rapidly too.”
The findings also
call into question the commitments made at the landmark Paris
conference on climate change last December, at which nations agreed
to limit global temperature rises to no more than 2C, a threshold
which scientists regard as the limit of safety, beyond which the
ravages of climate change are likely to become catastrophic and
irreversible.
However a 2C rise on
average globally could still leave tens or hundreds of millions of
people vulnerable to dramatic rises in their regional temperatures,
which could make their current way of living impossible to maintain.
Climate
change puts 1.3bn people and $158tn at risk, says World Bank
Organisation
urges better city planning and defensive measures to defend against
rapid rise in climate change-linked disasters
Larry Elliott
Economics editor
Monday 16 May 2016
20.00 BST
The global community
is badly prepared for a rapid increase in climate change-related
natural disasters that by 2050 will put 1.3 billion people at risk,
according to the World Bank.
Urging better
planning of cities before it was too late, a report published on
Monday from a Bank-run body that focuses on disaster mitigation, said
assets worth $158tn – double the total annual output of the global
economy – would be in jeopardy by 2050 without preventative action.
The Global Facility
for Disaster Reduction and Recovery said total damages from disasters
had ballooned in recent decades but warned that worse could be in
store as a result of a combination of global warming, an expanding
population and the vulnerability of people crammed into slums in
low-lying, fast-growing cities that are already overcrowded.
“With climate
change and rising numbers of people in urban areas rapidly driving up
future risks, there’s a real danger the world is woefully
unprepared for what lies ahead,” said John Roome, the World Bank
Group’s senior director for climate change.
“Unless we change
our approach to future planning for cities and coastal areas that
takes into account potential disasters, we run the real risk of
locking in decisions that will lead to drastic increases in future
losses.”
The facility’s
report cited case studies showing that densely populated coastal
cities are sinking at a time when sea levels are rising. It added
that the annual cost of natural disasters in 136 coastal cities could
increase from $6bn in 2010 to $1tn in 2070.
The report said that
the number of deaths and the monetary losses from natural disasters
varied from year to year, but the upward trend was pronounced.
Total annual damage
– averaged over a 10-year period – had risen tenfold from
1976–1985 to 2005–2014, from $14bn to more than $140bn. The
average number of people affected each year had risen over the same
period from around 60 million people to more than 170 million.
Although developed
countries have been responsible for the bulk of historic global
emissions, poorer countries are more vulnerable to the impact of
climate change and they demanded financial help from the west as part
of last December’s breakthrough global deal to reduce emissions.
Oxfam this week
called on rich countries to make good on the pledges made at the
Paris conference to provide the funding to help developing countries
adapt to the effects of global warming.
“Climate change is
a brutal reality confronting millions of the world’s most
vulnerable people. Their need for financial support to adapt to
climate extremes is urgent and rising,” Oxfam said in its
Unfinished Business report.
“International
support for adaptation falls well short of what is needed. Latest
estimates indicate that only 16% of international climate finance is
currently dedicated to adaptation – a mere $4bn–$6bn per year of
which is public finance.”
According to the the
facility, disaster risk is affected by three factors. It said these
were: hazard – the frequency of potentially dangerous naturally
occurring events, such as earthquakes or tropical cyclones; exposure
– the size of the population and the economic assets located in
hazard-prone areas; and vulnerability – the susceptibility of the
exposed elements to the natural hazard.
It added that hazard
was increasing due to climate change; exposure was going up because
more people were living in hazardous areas and that vulnerability was
on the rise because of badly designed and poorly planned housing.
The World Bank-run
body said the population was expected to rise by at least 40% in 14
of the 20 most populated cities in the world between 2015 and 2030,
with some cities growing by 10 million people in that period. “Many
of the largest cities are located in deltas and are highly prone to
floods and other hazards, and as these cities grow, an ever greater
number of people and more assets are at risk of disaster.”
Francis Ghesquiere,
head of the secretariat at the The Global Facility for Disaster
Reduction and Recovery, said: “By promoting policies that reduce
risk and avoiding actions to drive up risk, we can positively
influence the risk environment of the future. The drivers of future
risk are within the control of decision makers today. They must seize
the moment.”
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