December 3, 2010

Source: AlertNet

LONDON (AlertNet) – Around two thirds of countries will become highly vulnerable to climate change by 2030, unless efforts to tackle global warming are stepped up fast, according to an international index launched on Friday.

The “Climate Vulnerability Monitor”, backed by leading climate experts, assesses 184 countries according to the estimated effects of climate change in four key areas: health; weather disasters; human habitat loss from rising seas and desertification; and economic stresses on natural resources and other relevant sectors.

States are judged to have low, moderate, high, severe or acute vulnerability for each of these, and then given an overall rating.

By 2030, if no action is taken, 132 countries will register an overall factor of high vulnerability or above, the report says. Fifteen states, most of them in Africa, are already acutely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and that group will expand to 54 nations over the next two decades.

Those hardest-hit today are mainly fragile or failed states, including Afghanistan, Haiti, Myanmar and Somalia, as well as west African countries prone to food shortages, according to the report.

In 20 years’ time, they are likely to be joined by many other sub-Saharan African nations, low-lying island states, including the Maldives and Papua New Guinea, and large South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Breaking the index down, 42 states will become acutely vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change, 20 to extreme weather, 48 to loss of human habitat, and 68 to wide-ranging economic stresses.

While most western European nations are expected to maintain their low vulnerability to climate change over the next two decades, Spain and the United States will become highly vulnerable by 2030 mainly due to habitat loss.

“(The monitor) demonstrates how quickly vulnerability is accelerating almost everywhere, so that ultimately climate change could threaten the livelihoods, if not the survival, of all nations and peoples,” say Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and former Costa Rica President Jose Maria Figueres in a foreword to the report. “The fate of the world is tied to the fate of the most vulnerable.”

HEALTH IMPACTS MOST DEADLY

Regarding the threat to human life, the report estimates that climate change causes around 345,000 deaths per year today, nearly all due to malnutrition and climate-sensitive diseases like malaria and diarrhoea. Without efforts to prevent harm to health or reduce the pace of climate change, the annual death toll is predicted to rise to 843,000 by 2030.

The number of people affected by climate-related desertification each year is expected to increase from 2.6 million to 9.7 million, which the report warns could lead to “a relocation exodus”.

And the economic costs of global warming are seen more than doubling from $133 billion annually to $273 billion, with around a third caused by rising sea levels. Half of all those economic losses fall on industrialised countries, with the United States suffering the highest total.

But the report makes clear that the greatest burden from climate change will be borne by the world’s poorest countries and the most vulnerable groups within them, especially children who are most at risk from the health impacts.

“If we let pressures more than triple, or worse, no amount of humanitarian assistance or development aid is going to stem the suffering and devastation. Highly fragile countries will become graveyards over which we pour billions of dollars,” said Ross Mountain, the director general of aid effectiveness organisation DARA, which developed the index along with a group of nations known as the Climate Vulnerable Forum.

“Low-lying islands will simply not be viable anymore, then disappear. We will all pay and we will pay big time,” the former senior U.N. relief official said in a statement.

REVIEW OF ADAPTATION MEASURES

The report also looks at ways to limit the human and economic damage caused by climate change. It calls for urgent action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are trapping heat and warming up the planet, as well as the swift adoption of green energy and clean technologies.

Yet to cope with the temperature rise it says cannot be avoided in the coming years, it assesses the benefits of more than 50 concrete adaptation measures, from child survival programmes and improving water supply infrastructure to early warning systems for disasters, planting mangroves and making houses resistant to hurricanes.

The review concludes that measures to address the health impacts of climate change are generally the most cost-effective, followed by steps to lower the risks from weather disasters.

“Battling the threats of habitat loss entails some of the most expensive actions and some of the least feasible,” the report says, adding there are still less costly measures that can have positive results, including upgrading drainage systems, planting trees and soil conservation.

The monitor – due to be issued next in 2012 – acknowledges it has limitations because of a lack of comparable and consistent data around the world, and uncertainties in climate science and modelling. But it asserts the “rough picture” it sets out “is still likely to be reasonably accurate”.

“If adaptation efforts were put into effect to address the levels of impacts outlined here, vastly fewer human lives would be at risk, and many endangered species could be spared – for the most part at a very low cost,” it says.