Climate Change – A Threat to Poverty Eradication

If the emissions are not substantially reduced in a hundred years, millions of people will be endangered by floods, tens of millions by famine, hundreds of millions by malaria and almost three billion by water shortage, all caused by the climate change. The climate change threatens to void the work done for humane development and render people more unequal.

We need determined climate policy in order to attain the goals of global justice. The climate change causes the most suffering for the world’s poor who are innocent of the problem mainly inflicted by the industrial countries. There is a risk that the climate change will disable the efforts to fight the poverty. The climate change and the relevant political processes are connected with all the UN Millennium Development Goals.

The European Union has essentially advanced international climate policy from the beginning. The goal-oriented negotiations of the EU have among other things enabled developing countries to participate in the Kyoto Protocol. In March 2005, the European Council confirmed that the primary aim of the EU’s climate and energy policy is to restrict the global warming to less than two degrees Celsius compared with the pre-industrial period. This goal can be achieved only if the EU and other industrialised countries reduce their emissions at least by 30 % by 2020 and by 80 % by 2050.

REDUCTION OF VULNERABILITY AS A DIRECTION OF THE DEVELOPMENT

The acute question is which kind of development we are aiming for. How to promote development without promoting climate change? If we aspire to economic growth, as it is defined today, in the name of development, is it even possible to prevent climate change? Solving simultaneously the problems related to climate change and poverty at global level can lead to increase in well-being and improvements in the condition of environment. What is essential in adapting to climate change are the practices at local level, which increase people’s, especially women’s opportunities to take part in collective decision-making. Improving the access to food and water, the fair partition of land ownership and other resources and the rationalisation of the water consumption help to secure the basic needs. In addition, the diversification of livelihood structure reduces the vulnerability of communities when the livelihood of the whole population does not depend on one single source of income.

SOUTH AFRICA AND MOZAMBIQUE ARE LEARNING TO LIVE WITH CLIMATE CHANGE

The observation data of the African climate from the past 30-40 years shows that climate change has already started in Africa. If the development continues unchanged, it is predicted that Sub-Saharan Africa will be 0.5-2 degrees Celsius warmer and drier than today. It will rain 10 percent less than nowadays in the inland and greater evaporation worsens the water shortage. Extreme weather events, such as drought periods and floods, will become more common and seasonal variation will change.

Climate change affects people’s everyday life already. For example, in Sahel, in the Horn of Africa and in Southern Africa, people are forced to live with the consequences of climate change. Access to food in these regions can be very difficult and humanitarian crises might degenerate.

The Project “Adaptive” of the University of Sheffield aims to explain how people cope with the changes in their environment. Researchers have studied people’s lives in South Africa and its neighbouring country Mozambique. In Lehurutshe, South Africa, people have noticed that cyclic drought periods have become more common. Similarly in South-African Dzanani, farmers suffer from more general, significant drying trend with more pervasive drought. In the district of Uthukela, South Africa, the peasants have experienced increasing intensity and variability in rainfall and seasonality; and in Manjacaze, Mozambique, extreme weather patterns with floods and droughts have a severe impact on people’s lives.

Source: Simms, Andrew; Reid, Hannah & Magrath, John (edit.) 2004. “Up in Smoke? London: New Economics Foundation, nef.