This is the third article in the five-part series |
It is difficult, and remains contentious, to single out the contribution of climate change to contemporary crop failures, droughts, and severe weather events. However, there's little disagreement that global greenhouse gas emissions are increasing and that carbon dioxide and other gases will persist in the atmosphere decades after their release. In light of this, adaptation to climate change has moved from a tangential concern for a few countries to a practical necessity in national planning across the globe. The implications of adaptation even transcend national boundaries, affecting international relations and development aid flows worldwide.
Adaptation to climate change has become a much more high-profile concern since the drafting of the Kyoto Protocol. In parallel, there has been more attention to nations’ divergent greenhouse gas contributions and the wide divergence in expected damage due to climate change--specifically, developing nations which contribute the least to atmospheric greenhouse gases are also most likely to suffer the worst effects of climate change, a troubling revelation well-documented in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report released in February.
Responsibility, lack of response
At the intersection of adaptation and vulnerability, then, is what the authors of the most recent UN Human Development Report describe as a moral issue: the responsibility of rich nations to aid adaptive measures in poor regions. Not only are rich nations responsible because they are the major greenhouse gas producers, but because they have committed to aiding adaptation (through the UNFCCC) and to reducing poverty (through the Millennium Development Goals). The authors of the report, released last week, say the amount so far given in support of these promises--26 million U.S. dollars--is "a derisory response," equivalent to one week’s worth of spending on flood defenses in the U.K.
Though the Kyoto Protocol set binding emissions limits for greenhouse gases, it included only meager gestures toward adaptation funding. The UN report urges that this change with Kyoto’s successor, estimating that rich nations must provide an additional $86 billion for adaptation by 2016 to avoid a stalling, and then reversal, of development progress in needy countries. This remains true even if nations sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because of the persistence of past emissions. "For the first half of the 21st Century," the authors write, "there is no alternative to adaptation to climate change."
Lasting human consequences
Adaptation measures are already being undertaken in countries around the world. They include reforestation to prevent landslides in Brazil, a vaccination program in Cuba, a community plan of action in Bangladesh, and management of Indonesia’s coral reefs in response to widespread bleaching. WRI’s Weathering the Storm, which refers to these among its collected worldwide cases of adaptation, emphasizes that in many instances it’s difficult to separate "development" activities from "adaptation." In reality, the authors say, development and adaptation go hand in hand; reducing vulnerability to climate change often comes along with reducing vulnerability in general.
And vulnerability to climate shocks has aftereffects that far outlast the disasters’ news headlines. According to the Human Development Report, in drought-prone Kenya children age five and under are 50 percent more likely to be malnourished if they were born during a drought. In India, women born during a flood in the 1970s were 19 percent less likely to have attended primary school. These are the kinds of long-lasting human consequences, the authors say, which hinder all realms of development, and which wealthy nations must act to prevent. Their failure to do so would amount to "a moral failure on a scale unparalleled in history."
RELATED LINKS
The 2007/2008 Human Development Report: Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world
New York Times map: Winners and Losers in a Changing Climate
World Resources Institute's Weathering the Storm
OTHER ARTICLES IN THE SERIES
Beyond Kyoto: A Broader Policy on Climate Change:
Part V: U.S. Still Refuses Agreement on Binding Emissions Limits
Part IV: The Role of Deforestation in Climate Change
Part II: Increasing Corporate Support of Climate Action
Part I: The Future of the Kyoto Protocol
Top photo by DavidGardinerGarcia on Flickr
