A
group of 18 of key United Nations and partner aid agencies attending climate
change talks in Bonn this week called for the humanitarian impacts of global
warming to be addressed in a new greenhouse gas emissions agreement to be
negotiated later this year.
The
Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) said that the successor pact to the
Kyoto Protocol, with nations expected to wrap up negotiations in Copenhagen,
Denmark, this December, must take a practical approach to help alleviate the
suffering of vulnerable populations caused by extreme weather and
environmental degradation.
“The
scale of the potential humanitarian challenge presented by climate change in
the future is huge,” said John Holmes, the head of the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),
one of the UN bodies involved in the IASC.
“This
is a defining moment to ensure that the challenge is not insurmountable and
human suffering is minimised,” added Mr. Holmes, who is also the UN
Emergency Relief Coordinator.
More
than 20 million people have been displaced by climate-related sudden-onset
natural disasters in 2008 alone, according to a new study by OCHA and the
Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
The
total number of people affected by natural disasters has risen sharply over
the past 10 years, with an average of 211 million people directly affected
each year, nearly five times the number impacted by conflict in the same
period.
Extreme
and slow-onset climate events – such as floods, storms, droughts, rising sea
levels and desertification – are impacting more and more people each year,
with the most vulnerable including women and children, those already
struggling with poverty, insecurity, hunger, poor health and environmental
decline.
Climate
change is also expected to dramatically affect patterns of migration and
population movement, with many millions to be displaced by prolonged droughts,
repeated floods or storms, according to an IASC news release.
The
Committee noted that the Copenhagen agreement has potential to avert or reduce
many of the humanitarian consequences of climate change over the next decade,
but adapting to these climatic shocks will mean focusing on prevention and
preparation by strengthening national and local resources to cope with future
disasters.
The UN
talks under way in Bonn are in their second week, with countries set to start
making more detailed proposals on an initial round of comments on a proposed
draft for the climate change deal.
“We
are getting down to the nitty gritty of the negotiations,” said Yvo de Boer,
the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
