Adverse impact in myriad forms is gradually occurring in various parts of the globe in the absence of any well-concerted strategy to meet the challenge of climate change. This adverse impact is RISK OF CIVIL UNREST
Some scientists have expressed the apprehension that violence could rise with climate crisis, increasing between now and 2050 with warmer temperatures and extreme rainfall patterns. A study published by researchers from Princeton University and the University of California-Berkeley in the recent issue of journal Science points out that even slight spikes in temperature and precipitation have greatly increased the risk of personal violence and social upheaval throughout human history.
Scientists have analyzed data from studies on a wide range of issues including ancient wars, road rage, and even pitchers throwing at batters in Major League Baseball, to quantify the potential influence of climate warming on human conflict. According to this study, the incidence of war and civil unrest may increase by as much as 56 percent in the next four decades due to warmer temperature and extreme rainfall patterns predicted by climate change scientists, they said.
Projected onto an Earth that is expected to warm by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, the authors suggest that more human conflict is a likely outcome of climate change. The researchers analyzed 60 studies from a number of disciplines — including archaeology, criminology, economics and psychology — that have explored the connection between weather and violence in various parts of the world from about 10,000 BCE to the present day. During an 18-month period, the Princeton-Berkeley researchers reviewed those studies’ data — and often re-crunched raw numbers — to calculate the risk that violence would rise under hotter and wetter conditions.
IMPACT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH
A recent study released by the World Bank, while detailing how global warming could affect sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, focuses particular attention on “the likely impacts of present day two-degree and four-degree-Celsius warming on agricultural production, water resources, and coastal vulnerability for affected populations” in South Asia.
According to this report, in Bangladesh, land areas at risk of floods could increase by close to 30 percent if temperatures rise by two degrees. Two major industrial and financial hubs in South Asia, Mumbai and Kolkata, are meanwhile both threatened by sea-level rise. In India, where over 60 percent of crops are rain-dependent, erratic monsoons and rising temperatures are likely to impact harvests and crop yields. It further notes: “With a temperature increase of two to 2.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, by the 2050s reduced water availability for agricultural production may result in more than 63 million people no longer being able to meet their caloric demand by production in the river basins (of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra).”
The World Bank report also warns that if pledges made at the climate summits in Copenhagen and Cancun are not met, there is a greater-than-40-percent chance of “warming exceeding four degrees Celsius by 2100, and a 10-percent possibility of this occurring already by the 2070s, assuming emissions follow the…business-as-usual…pathway.” In South Asia, whose population of 1.6 billion is expected to rise to 2.2 billion by 2050, the biggest issue is water scarcity or excess in the extreme.
The report predicts that even if action is taken and warming is reduced, the effects of a hotter climate would still be pronounced in the region, adding, “Many of the climate change impacts in the region, which appear quite severe with relatively modest warming of 1.5-2°C, pose a significant challenge to development.”
Major industrial and financial hubs like Colombo, Mumbai and India’s capital, New Delhi, are vulnerable to flash floods. Floods in May 2010 were estimated to have caused over 50 million dollars worth of economic damages in Colombo, while just last week New Delhi’s main airport was flooded due to the fast moving monsoon.
In countries like Bangladesh, which is struggling to move off a list of the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs), extreme weather events can set back a year’s worth of development in the course of a single day. On 15 November 2007, Cyclone Sidr tore through Bangladesh, destroying 800,000 tonnes of rice, accounting for two percent of total annual production in 2007. The storm left in its wake a bill of 1.7 billion dollars, amounting to 2.6 of that year’s gross domestic product (GDP).
The South Asian monsoon, once as predictable as clockwork, now comes in fits and starts, either evading desperate farmers for months at a time or emptying in buckets on unsuspecting and vulnerable populations. Pakistan felt the weight of these changes in 2010 when torrential rain turned into rushing floods that claimed nearly 2,000 lives and affected 20 million people.
Last year, Cyclone Nilam swept the Southern Indian coast, consuming half a million hectares of agricultural land and leaving over 1,300 small tanks and 7,000 km of roadways in dire need of repairs. The report warns that an extreme wet monsoon that currently has a chance of occurring only once in 100 years is projected to occur every 10 years by the end of the century.
CLIMATE REFUGEES
According to the United Nations, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami displaced 2.2 million people in 12 countries and in Bangladesh; 4.4 million people were displaced by Cyclone Sidr and floods in 2007. According to Refugees International, an estimated additional 200 million people will be displaced due to climate change and natural disaster by 2050.
Experts say that the assessment of damage in natural disasters becomes all the more difficult simply because of the underlying uncertainty that accompanies such calamities. The international community has long been mulling over the impact of climate change on migration. According to Susan F. Martin, director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM), it is high time that climate refugees or environmental migrants get some serious attention.
Some experts have opined that environmental factors are seldom the principal reason that people move. People generally migrate when environmental problems intersect with other factors, such as economic (loss of livelihoods), political (lack of governmental safety nets), and social (networks of people who have already migrated) ones.
There are four ways through which climate change is likely to increase the propensity of human mobility in the context of these other factors:
- Changes in weather patterns that contribute to longer-term drying trends that affect access to essential resources such as water and negatively impact the sustainability of a variety of environment-related livelihoods including agriculture, forestry, fishing, etc.
- Rising sea levels and glacier melt that cause massive and repeated flooding that render coastal and low-lying areas uninhabitable in the longer-term.
- Increased frequency and magnitude of weather-related acute natural hazards.
- Competition over natural resources that may exacerbate pressures, which contribute to conflict, which in turn precipitates movements of people.
Broadly speaking, the first two are slow-onset processes that are likely to lead to gradual increases in migration. The latter two involve acute events and are likely to lead to more immediate, large-scale displacement.
Most of these movements are expected to be within the borders of countries but in some cases, the migration and displacement is likely to be across international borders. Much of the international migration is likely to be into neighboring countries – for example, Bangladesh to India. A minority of the movements will likely be to more distant countries. There are cases, however, in which whole communities and even countries may need to be relocated, particularly in the small island states facing significant levels of rising sea levels and no interior to which people can move.
Climate change will impact both developing and developed countries. The difference is that developed countries generally have the financial resources to be able to prepare, respond and recover from the effects of climate change. The impacts will be felt more acutely in poor countries and, especially, in those weak governance or experiencing conflict and political instability.
If the experience with the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile is a harbinger of what is likely to happen, particularly in acute events, it is noteworthy that a much stronger earthquake in Chile led to little loss of life, largely because of building codes and other preparatory actions, whereas a weaker earthquake in Haiti led to devastating loss of life and displaced millions.
IMPACT ON CHILDREN
The children are more biologically and psychologically vulnerable to the many direct and indirect effects of climate change and fossil fuel combustion. These effects include increased incidence of malnutrition and infectious disease, physical and psychological trauma from extreme weather-related disasters, heat stress, respiratory disease, reproductive and developmental disorders, and cancer. Early impairment and disease can affect the physical and psychological health and well-being of children over their entire life-course. Effects of in utero and postnatal exposure to both toxic and psychological stressors may be inherited trans generationally, impacting the health of future generations.
According World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, more than 88 percent of the existing global burden of disease due to climate change occurs in children less than five years of age. Although children everywhere are affected, most of the impact is felt in populations of low socioeconomic status, squarely raising the issue of environmental justice. The impacts will continue to grow under the projected trajectory of climate change and fossil fuel emissions.
Besides, waether-induced disasters like floods, droughts, cyclones, hurricanes etc., which have increased in frequency and intensity as a result of climate change, have directly affected an estimated 66.5 million children worldwide, 600,000 of whom died every year from 1990 to 2000. The number of children affected is predicted to more than double, rising to 175 million a year in the next decade. Children are highly vulnerable both to physical trauma, stress, drowning, and displacement due to floods and to famines associated with drought. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina forced one million people in New Orleans from their homes and left 372,000 children without schools. Higher rates of anxiety and depression have been found among children affected by this disaster.
CONCLUSION
Effective, prevention and adaptation strategies to climate change must be centered on the needs of the people in general and children in particular — in present and future. Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, McKinsey, and researchers at Stanford University indicate that the cost of acting broadly to reduce emissions from power generation and transport, make buildings, and appliances more efficient, and invest in alternative fuels and technologies is modest compared with the benefits to the people and their future.
