Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
adaptation to climate change in developing countries. The challenge is, first, that
current financial pledges to enable adaptation are too low to protect adequately
the lives and livelihoods of people in developing countries. Second, the region
currently lacks suitable frameworks and mechanisms to effectively deliver
adaptation support. Third, global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are
grossly inadequate. Without much stronger mitigation action, the adaptation
challenge will be exacerbated beyond Australia's - and perhaps planetary -
response capacities. Together these issues produce a perfect storm that urgently
requires addressing.
Hand in hand with enhanced efforts to reduce climate change pressures, there is
a need to focus on the adaptation challenge, especially, but not only, in developing
countries. A sharp ethical challenge is raised, for the reality is that those people and
communities who are most affected by climate change are those who have been
least responsible for the crisis and who have the fewest resources to cope and adapt.
Climate change impacts in the near Asia-Pacific region
Many of Oxfam's partners - local community organizations - are on the front
line of climate change. For them climate change is not a possible risk, it is an
increasingly harsh reality. Climate change is affecting communities' livelihoods,
their susceptibility to humanitarian disasters and, as disease patterns change,
their health. Their stories reveal the human face of the issue. For example, Niu
Loane, a local farmer on the island nation of Tuvalu, reports that it is harder to
grow traditional taro and pulaka because the soils are becoming saltier. Rising
sea levels and more frequent tidal inundations are poisoning the land and fresh
water wells (Oxfam, 2010c). Reverend Tafue Lusama reports that local fish stocks
are rapidly declining due to the coral reefs being bleached from warmer oceans.
He says that now 'It is cheaper for a person to … buy a tin of fish … which is
processed thousands of miles away … than buying fish from local fishermen'
(Crikey, 2011). These stories are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
human security and climate change.
Oxfam's 2011 report 'Growing a better future' (Oxfam, 2011) reported that
the price of staple foods such as maize, already at an all-time high, will more than
double in the next 20 years. While there are other important factors underlying
these increases - such as the lack of investment in agricultural development in
developing countries and the distortions of the global trading system - up to half
of these increases will be due to climate change.
Climate change's impact on food production and hence on prices will manifest
in a number of ways. First, it will apply a further brake on growth in crop yields.
It has been estimated that rice yields may decline by 10 per cent for each 1°C
rise in dry growing season minimum temperatures. Sub-Saharan countries could
experience catastrophic declines in yield of 20-30 per cent by 2080, rising as
high as 50 per cent in Sudan and Senegal (Oxfam, 2011).
Second, the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events
such as heatwaves, droughts, storms and floods can wipe out harvests at a stroke.
