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Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
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Global warming 'causing 315,000 deaths a year'
Source: Agencies |
May 30, 2009, Saturday
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Print Edition
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CLIMATE change kills about 315,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and weather disasters, and the annual death toll is expected to rise to half a million by 2030, a report said yesterday.
The study, commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF), estimates that climate change seriously affects 325 million people every year, a number that will more than double in 20 years.
Economic losses due to global warming amount to more than US$125 billion a year and are expected to rise to US$340 billion by 2030, according to the report.
"Climate change is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time, causing suffering to hundreds of millions of people worldwide," said Kofi Annan, former United Nations secretary-general and GHF president.
The report said developing countries bear more than nine-tenths of the human and economic burden of climate change, while the 50 poorest countries contribute less than 1 percent of the carbon emissions that are heating up the planet.
Annan urged governments due to meet at UN talks in Copenhagen in December to agree on an effective, fair and binding global pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.
"Copenhagen needs to be the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated," he wrote in an introduction to the report. "The alternative is mass starvation, mass migration and mass sickness."
The study warned that the true human impact of global warming is likely to be far more severe than it predicts, because it uses conservative UN scenarios.
The report called for a particular focus on the 500 million people it identifies as extremely vulnerable because they live in poor countries prone to droughts, floods, storms, sea-level rise and creeping deserts.
Africa is the region most at risk from climate change, the report said.
To avoid the worst outcomes, the report said efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change must be scaled up 100 times in developing countries. International funds pledged for this purpose amount to only US$400 million, compared with an average estimated cost of US$32 billion annually, it notes.
The study, commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF), estimates that climate change seriously affects 325 million people every year, a number that will more than double in 20 years.
Economic losses due to global warming amount to more than US$125 billion a year and are expected to rise to US$340 billion by 2030, according to the report.
"Climate change is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time, causing suffering to hundreds of millions of people worldwide," said Kofi Annan, former United Nations secretary-general and GHF president.
The report said developing countries bear more than nine-tenths of the human and economic burden of climate change, while the 50 poorest countries contribute less than 1 percent of the carbon emissions that are heating up the planet.
Annan urged governments due to meet at UN talks in Copenhagen in December to agree on an effective, fair and binding global pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.
"Copenhagen needs to be the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated," he wrote in an introduction to the report. "The alternative is mass starvation, mass migration and mass sickness."
The study warned that the true human impact of global warming is likely to be far more severe than it predicts, because it uses conservative UN scenarios.
The report called for a particular focus on the 500 million people it identifies as extremely vulnerable because they live in poor countries prone to droughts, floods, storms, sea-level rise and creeping deserts.
Africa is the region most at risk from climate change, the report said.
To avoid the worst outcomes, the report said efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change must be scaled up 100 times in developing countries. International funds pledged for this purpose amount to only US$400 million, compared with an average estimated cost of US$32 billion annually, it notes.
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