The impact of climate change will fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest countries... Poor people already live on the front lines of pollution, disaster, degradation of resources and land. For them, adaptation is a matter of sheer survival.” Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan

For developing countries climate change means more humanitarian disasters, scarcer access to clean water, threat to food supplies, greater risk of conflicts and more people on the move.

More humanitarian disasters

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says by 2025, more than half of the population living in the developing world will be highly vulnerable to floods and storms.

Andrew Hewett from Oxfam told SBS with rising sea levels, more intense tropical cyclones and shifts in rain patterns there will be a greater incidence of humanitarian disasters.

Access to clean water

The flows of some of Asia's major rivers such as the Tigris, Euphrates, Indus and Brahmaputra are projected to fall by as much as a quarter by 2050 - affecting the lives of more than a billion people across Asia.

In the Nile region, most scenarios estimate a decrease in river flow of up to 75 per cent by 2100, displacing up to 90 million people by 2015.

The Himalayan glaciers have retreated by 67 per cent since 1990. Further glacial melt could increase summer river flow and floods over coming decades and in the longer term would dramatically reduce water flows as glaciers permanently retreat.

Food supplies

The World Health Organisation predicts infectious mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever will spread. (Using Climate to Predict Infectious Deseases Epidemics, 2005 Report)

Mr Hewett says mosquitos that carry these two diseases are already being found in areas where they were not present before.

The impact of climate change on water supplies is likely to increase cases of diarrhoea which already claims the lives of nearly 2 million children a year.

Five million serious illnesses and 150,000 deaths already occur every year worldwide directly as a result of climate change.

People's resistance to disease can be weakened by heat stress, water shortages and malnutrition. Increases in air pollution will lead to a rise in respiratory illnesses.

People’s capacity to grow or to develop resources is also expected to change because of a change in climatic patterns.

Mr Hewett says “it’s people in the developing countries that are most reliant on environmental resources for their livelihoods. Those resources are under pressure, and it is likely they will be even more so because of climate change”.

Crop yields in sub Saharan Africa are projected to fall by 20 per cent with ongoing climate change - in an area already suffering food shortages.

Crops on six of Tuvalu's eight islands have been damaged by rising sea levels and more severe storms. Export crops such as copra, coffee and sugarcane are also highly vulnerable to damage by heat and severe weather.

Conflicts

Loss of food and water security will lead to increased conflict.

An 18-month study of Sudan by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has found that the true genesis of the Darfur conflict is to be found in failing rains and creeping desertification which result from climate change.

The report "Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment" says these factors “threaten to trigger a succession of new wars across Africa unless more is done to contain the damage”.

The UNEP report also found that there could be a drop of up to 70% in crop yields in the most vulnerable areas of the Sahel, an ecologically fragile belt stretching from Senegal to Sudan.

It also pointed to incipient conflicts in Chad as "at least in part associated with environmental changes", and to growing tensions in southern Africa fuelled by droughts and flooding.

Oxfam says also in Kenya, conflict has been triggered by water and food shortages as people find themselves dealing with unprecedented famine.

Aboriginal Australia and Torres Strait Islands

According to a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report  Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders are among the world’s most vulnerable people to climate change.

Already faced with the challenges of inadequate water, sanitation and power supplies, poor housing, few employment opportunities and insufficient health services, many of these communities are in low-lying or coastal tropical areas that are particularly vulnerable to storm surges and floods which will increase as the planet warms, the IPCC says.

Indigenous people's health will be affected directly by climate change in the form of heat stress and the spread of mosquito borne disease; and indirectly, as damage to traditional lands threaten the cultural, mental and physical wellbeing of Aboriginal communities.

Millennium Development Goals

As developing countries will have to cope with the growing impacts of climate change, they will have even less resources to invest in development.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) clearly stated that the effects of climate change, which are already being felt, are only making the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals more difficult.

“At the midway point between their adoption in 2000 and the 2015 target date for achieving the millennium development goals, Africa is not on the way to achieve any of the goals,” the organisation said.

Some argue a new framework of action that brings together the MDG and plans to reduce developing countries’ emissions targets is needed.


MDG targets and climate change implications

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger 

-Diminished economic security given increase in weather extremes
-Diminished bio-diversity and access to natural resources
-Diminished crop yields
-Reduced fisheries due to coral bleaching and increased calcification of coral

2. Achieve universal primary education

-Lifestyle demands of increased time seeking food, water and cash income reduces time for education


3. Promote gender equity and empower women

Women are already 2/3 of the world's poor
Women rely more than men on natural resources for income

4. Reduce child mortality

Children are particularly vulnerable to flood-related, vector-borne and hunger related diseases

5. Improve maternal health

Mothers are particularly vulnerable to malaria

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

-Malaria and other vector-borne diseases are predicted to dramatically increase with extreme weather events, increased flooding and temperature rises
-The malaria zone is expected to extend, especially in Australia-Oceania

7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability

Target: Halve number of people without access to safe drinking water

Target: Achieve significant improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers

-Increased water shortages will result from changes in rainfall patterns, greater periods of drought and salt water incursion into fresh water reserves.

-Sea-level rise will mostly affect the urban dwelling poor, as the vast majority of the world's poor lives in flood prone areas (particularly Asia).

-Loss of arable land, particularly in coastal areas is expected.


8. Develop a global partnership for development

-Dealing with the costs of weather related disasters could affect the Gross Domestic Product, level of indebtedness, state of public finances, and investment in development of poor countries.