The Silent Crisis
A new report released on Friday by Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum reveals that already, each year climate change is responsible for a massive 300,000 deaths and costs the world in excess of $125bn – more than all the current world aid. The study’s authors, who have painstakingly collated all relevant available information on human impacts of climate change, estimate that by 2030 this will rise to 500,000 deaths and costs of $340bn annually.
More serious is the fact that 99% of deaths from weather-related disasters are in developing countries. Yet the twelve countries least at risk – nearly all from the North – have made $72bn available for their own adaptation needs while pledging only $400m to help the Most Vulnerable Countries, the hardest hit by climate change but who have done the least to cause it. This, according to the report is “less than one state in Germany is spending on improving its flood defences”.
Annan has laid the blame squarely on politicians for the impasse in the negotiations, citing widespread ignorance and weak leadership in many countries. Further, he has called upon the negotiators either to reach “the most ambitious agreement ever negotiated or to continue to accept mass starvation,mass sickness and mass migration on an ever growing scale. Climate Change is a silent human crisis. Yet it is the greatest humanitarian challenge of our time”.
The report was based on data provided by the World Bank, WHO, the UN, Oxfam, the Potsdam Institute and others and reviewed by ten leading climate experts including IPCC chair Dr Rajendra Pachauri, who said: “Four billion people are vulnerable now and 500 million are now at extreme risk. The scale of devastation is so great that it is hard to believe the truth behind it, or how it is possible that so many people remain ignorant of this crisis”.
A new report released on Friday by Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum reveals that already, each year climate change is responsible for a massive 300,000 deaths and costs the world in excess of $125bn – more than all the current world aid. The study’s authors, who have painstakingly collated all relevant available information on human impacts of climate change, estimate that by 2030 this will rise to 500,000 deaths and costs of $340bn annually.
More serious is the fact that 99% of deaths from weather-related disasters are in developing countries. Yet the twelve countries least at risk – nearly all from the North – have made $72bn available for their own adaptation needs while pledging only $400m to help the Most Vulnerable Countries, the hardest hit by climate change but who have done the least to cause it. This, according to the report is “less than one state in Germany is spending on improving its flood defences”.
Annan has laid the blame squarely on politicians for the impasse in the negotiations, citing widespread ignorance and weak leadership in many countries. Further, he has called upon the negotiators either to reach “the most ambitious agreement ever negotiated or to continue to accept mass starvation,mass sickness and mass migration on an ever growing scale. Climate Change is a silent human crisis. Yet it is the greatest humanitarian challenge of our time”.
The report was based on data provided by the World Bank, WHO, the UN, Oxfam, the Potsdam Institute and others and reviewed by ten leading climate experts including IPCC chair Dr Rajendra Pachauri, who said: “Four billion people are vulnerable now and 500 million are now at extreme risk. The scale of devastation is so great that it is hard to believe the truth behind it, or how it is possible that so many people remain ignorant of this crisis”.
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