Bleak Future Looms, G8 Urged To Act
It is a bleak future.
A new report released by Oxfam on Monday says climate change is the greatest peril to humanity this century, and its effects are barrelling down on the present at an alarming rate, leaving the world very little time in which to act.
With Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the power group of the G8 convening in Italy this week, Oxfam and leading NGOs are calling for drastic and immediate action in response to the global threat that is disproportionately hitting the world's poorest. The world's rich countries have promised to act, they said, and the G8 represents the prime opportunity to do so—especially for Canada.
"Unfortunately when it comes to taking action on climate change, Canada's literally stuck in the tar sands, and nowhere does this become more evident than at international gatherings such as the G8," said Graham Saul, director of Climate Action Network. "Canada is developing a reputation for being the worst performer on climate change in the industrialized world, but in Italy Prime Minister Harper has an opportunity to turn this around and make Canadians proud by supporting real action."
For real action, Oxfam and others are calling for $2 billion in emergency funding; a down payment for a total of $150 billion a year needed for developing countries to cope with the effects of climate change. Canada's share would be $80 million. They are also calling for science-based limits on climate change to keep any global rise in temperature well below two degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels, a reduction of emissions from rich countries of at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and a reduction of 80 per cent from all countries by 2050.
Joanna Kerr, director of policy and outreach for Oxfam Canada, said it is the G8 countries that created the climate change crisis, and the onus is on the world's rich countries to take the lead. Hunger, she said, will quite possibly be the defining disaster of this generation, the uneven impact on crops will cost Africa up to $2 billion per year, and natural disasters are already occurring with extraordinary frequency.
Oxfam Canada delivered the report, Suffering the Science: Climate Change, People, and Poverty, at a press conference on Parliament Hill Monday where Ms. Kerr was joined by Mr. Saul of the Climate Action Network, and Gerry Barr of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. The groups are joining forces now, Ms. Kerr says, because they have determined, if a little late, that climate change is fundamentally a development crisis, not just an environmental one.
"We've come to realize how enormous this challenge is and what an incredibly severe impact this is going to have on any efforts to eradicate poverty," Ms. Kerr said in an interview Monday. "It's just so overwhelming we cannot not be part of a finding of the solution, and therefore, we see the fact that we need for our leaders to really step up to take seriously this issue."
Combining the recent findings of 2,500 scientists, historical data, and the testimonies of indigenous people and development workers in nearly 100 countries, Oxfam's report tells of the drastic changes occurring round the globe and the tragic toll it is taking on hundreds of millions of lives.
"Without action, most of the gains that the world's poorest countries have made in development and ameliorating the harmful effects of poverty in the past 50 years will be lost, irrecoverable in the foreseeable future," the report states. "The impacts on people's health are frighteningly diverse. Climate change is bringing water- and insect-borne diseases of the tropics to hundreds of millions of people with no previous knowledge of them."
Among the staggering figures and statistics in the report are that an estimated 26 million of the world's people have already been displaced because of climate change, and that 375 million may be affected by climate-related disasters in the next several years. Seasonal patterns are changing and becoming less distinct, creating havoc for farmers, and eventually jeopardizing many of the developing world's most stable crops such as rice and maize.
A warming of two degrees Celsius—chosen because developed countries deemed it "economically acceptable"—will cause a devastating future for at least 660 million people. Without immediate action, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the German Chancellor's adviser on climate change, warns that a rise to five degrees Celsius by 2100 is likely, and that the world's seven billion population will fall to just one billion.
Of the G8 countries, the UK and Germany are seen to have taken the most effective action in response to climate change so far, though even they fall far short of the changes Oxfam says is needed. With little official information to go on, Oxfam and others were unsure of Canada's approach, but sought hope in the government's stated priorities for when it takes over the presidency of the G8 in 2010.
"Mr. Harper has already said that when Canada hosts the G8, climate change will be one major piece of the agenda," Mr. Barr of the CCIC said. "We are now in a complex emergency. It's about recession, global recession. It is about climate change, it is about poverty and food and security. Leaders need to take up that complex emergency and speak to it in a way which is both responsible and complex.
"Nothing less will do the trick."
mcollins@embassymag.ca
http://embassymag.ca/page/printpage/bleak_future-7-8-2009