The devastating effects of climate change
For those who are directly hit by the increase in catastrophic disasters around the globe, there is no time for debate: climate change is happening now and it's biting hard.
According to the Red Cross, an average of 354 natural disasters occurred throughout the world each year from 1991 to 1999. Between 2000 and 2004, this figure more than doubled to an average of 728 natural disasters per year.
Catastrophes like the tsunami in Burma or the hurricanes in Haiti in 2008 don't only cause heavy rains and knock down a few trees. They destroy entire livelihoods, annihilate lifetime investments, and take thousands of lives each year. Towns are wiped out, cattle & crops are ruined and healthcare, sanitation and government infrastructures are completely demolished leaving populations to rebuild their entire life out the rubble.
Dramatic impacts on health
With an increase in the spread of infectious diseases, irremediable impacts on populations’ mental health and increasing malnutrition, health needs to be at the centre of the discussion around the impacts of climate change.
Read about the WHO's position on climate change.
As well as causing natural catastrophes, climate change also affects food yields, water supplies, livestock and ecosystems with direct harmful impacts on people’s health.
In Kenya, climate change is malaria. As the temperature rises in high altitudes, towns purposefully built above mosquito levels are now subject to new risks of malaria epidemics.
In Nepal, climate change is droughts. With the rising temperatures, the Himalayan glaciers are now melting throughout the winter. This will leave thousands of villages without fresh water as the rivers flowing from the mountains run dry in the summer heat.
In Vietnam, climate change is starvation. The rising sea levels are threatening to flood the Mekong Delta, the country’s largest rice-growing area, with the risk of causing severe food shortages, leaving millions to starve.
And climate change is also happening in our very own backyard. Many towns like Cockermouth have suffered from terrible flooding, exerting severe and lasting mental stress on the distraught populations whose lives have been ruined.
Poor population's drastic vulnerability
Poor people in developing countries are much more vulnerable to the devastating effects of increasing natural catastrophes. Because of a lack of investment and infrastructure, they are unable to prepare for catastrophes and repair the damages incurred.
There is no moral to their story, as every day we witness those who are contributing the least to the man-made causes of climate change suffering its most dire consequences. It is because of developed country's mindless policies that their lives are being changed forever for the worst.
In parallel to the changing climate, dangerous development initiatives are also increasing the risks of disaster. Excessive and unsustainable farming or blind deforestation drastically lead to irremediable environmental degradation, causing dramatic landslides or devastating droughts.
Want more? Click here to watch Professor Lord May speak about the methods of prevention and cure linked to climate change and infectious disease in developing countries for the UCL-Lancet's annual lecture.
