by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The world's poorest and most vulnerable children are, according to a new report from UNICEF UK, being hit hardest by the impact of climate change.
Published exactly 10 years after the UK signed the Kyoto Protocol, “Our Climate, Our Children, Our Responsibility” calles for immediate action from Government to make children a priority in the climate change agenda.
It describes how children, especially in Africa and Asia, face increased violence and disease, and scarcer food and clean water, causing up to an extra 160,000 deaths a year.
The report says that climate change is threatening achievement of the UN's Millennium Development Goals relating to children.
David Bull, UNICEF UK's executive director, said that those who have contributed least to climate change, that is to say the world's poorest children, are the ones that are suffering the most.
According to the report, climate change could cause an additional 40,000 to 160,000 child deaths per year in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa through increased poverty.
Temperature increases of two degrees Celsius could put an extra 30m-200m people at risk of hunger, and childhood diseases such as malaria will spread to new areas.
UNICEF called on Government to ensure CO2 emissions are slashed by at least 80% by 2050 and urged the Department for International Development to make the effect of climate change on children a mainstream issue.
The organisation also urged businesses in the UK to substantially reduce emissions and contribute to the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change.
"Many more children could die," David Bull, UNICEF UK's executive director, said, “and it is clear that a failure to address climate change is a failure to protect children."
The talk about temperature rising is here again and no one even, so it seems, wants to acknowledge, though the chairman of the IPCC did so publicly, the findings from a major study in Australia that states that the temperatures have not been rising, not even by a fraction, ever since 2002 and have, in fact, plateaued out.
Why we are still being painted the “if temperatures rise by x degrees Celsius” and such does beat me.
Regardless of whether the temperatures are going to be rising, which they are not, so it would appear, the impact will be there. The ice will continue to melt because it is warmer than it was decades ago and that also will change the climate elsewhere.
The UK public is being urged to join UNICEF's campaign to increase the 2050 emissions reduction target and include aviation and shipping in the Climate Change Bill.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has also warned that up to a billion people could lose their homes as a result of climate change within the next 50 years when he said that rising sea levels or food and water shortages could force millions from the their homes.
Those rising sea leaves and food shortages will come about even if the temperatures are not rising any further and, if they indeed have plateaued out as the Australian study suggests and the head of the IPCC has admitted also, as the climate is warmer than it was decades ago and therefore the melt will continue and what else such melt and this cycling climate change of the Earth will bring with it further the Gods only know.
Personally, like many experts as well, I have my doubts that we can alter the course of this by reducing CO2 output and all such, though I am sure it will not hurt to do so and to reduce our impact on the planet a little more. Ideally more than just a little. The problem is though that we must prepared to deal with the changes and growing foods for bio-fuel rather than to feed the hungry is rather vile in the extreme.
Maybe we need to get off our dependence on oil based fuels and find a better source, including the burning of waste wood, and wood generated from tree cutting operations by councils and such, which so often is left to go to waste, as well as by a program, that could be envisaged for the UK, of the total eradication of the Dutch Elm Disease problem. It can be done with will and foresight. The wood generated in such a way, which needs to be disposed off in a sanitary way by burning, could fire micro generating power stations for many decades to come. In the end there would be no more Dutch Elm Disease and by that time we may have found another source with which to fire the generators.
Reduction of our oil use is another important must. And how do we do that?
The answer to that, I believe, may be the subject of another article.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
Poorest children hit by climate change
