Introduction - The Global Climate System: Patterns, Processes, and Teleconnections - page 18

The arid and semi-arid West African Sahel has a problem climate. It suffers
not only from the extremes (droughts and floods) but, like other arid zones,
also suffers when average conditions prevail. It is a characteristic of arid
regions that rainfall is skewed toward dryness with a few high rainfall events
being balanced out by a larger number of below average conditions.
Therefore, average conditions could be harmful. Northeast Brazil is another
area with a problem climate. Bangladesh is plagued with floods and droughts;
Indonesia with floods, droughts, and fires; Papua New Guinea with drought
and frost. In some cases an entire country can be said to have a problem with
its climate regime, and in most cases there are smaller areas within a country
that have problem climates.
Anthropocentric perspective
When researchers are asked what the phrase ''problem climates'' brings to
mind, they most often respond by noting that climate is only a problem if it
affects people in adverse ways. Several note the statement about a tree falling
in the forest: when a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it
make a sound? In other words, problem climates are only those climates that
cause problems for activities that people and societies want to carry out. As a
variation of this view, one can find examples of where there had been no
human activities in a given area and, consequently, the climate was not
viewed as a problem. Yet, as people move into areas that are marginal for
human activities from a climate perspective, the interactions between society
and the climate system become problematic: more crop failures, for example,
because the soils or rainfall conditions were not suited to the selected crops or
land-use practices. This particular process has been referred to as ''drought
follows the plow'' (Glantz 1994 ).
Problem climates, then, are generated not only by changes in rainfall or
temperature, but also by changes in certain kinds of human activities. For
their part, societies are not just the victims of the climate system but are
involved in the various ways in which the climate system and its impacts
might be changing.
Rich and poor societies alike have increasingly come to realize the extent
to which human activities (e.g. industrialization processes and land-use
practices) and ecological processes can affect the local and global atmo-
spheres as well as be affected by them. In addition, an increasing number of
government, individual, and corporate decisions are being made for which a
knowledge of climate affairs is required. There is a growing awareness
among educators in many disciplines of the need for a better understanding
of just how climate variability, change, and extremes can and do affect the
environment and the socio-economic and political affairs of people, cultures,
and nations.