Climate Change Poised To Undo Two Decades Of Progress Against Poverty
InterAction is deeply concerned over the current state of the world’s climate. If it continues to go unchecked, climate change could undo a significant amount of progress achieved during the past two decades in poverty reduction, sustainable economic development, and international stability and security.
Climate change is one of the cross-cutting issues that most affects the work of the InterAction alliance. It has reduced access to water in poverty-stricken rural communities, which has reduced crop yields, leading to a lack of reliable access to food, involuntary migration and the breakup of families, hunger and malnourishment, and an overall increase in vulnerability. Over the last 20 years, climate change has also increased severe weather-related disasters fourfold from the prior two decades. Their increased frequency and magnitude has led to a reduced recovery time for affected populations between events and an increase in vulnerability worldwide from new threats such as rising sea levels. For the country Maldives this means that if climate change continues at its current pace, the entire island nation could be lost underwater by the turn of the century.
These issues are not confined to the world’s most poverty-stricken areas. When rural communities are affected whose livelihoods depend on agriculture, food security is threatened worldwide. When coastal communities disappear due to rising sea levels, not only are flooding disasters a greater risk further inland, but the forced population displacements from the disappearing coastal communities increase urban poverty and population unrest.
The poorest countries – which are the least responsible for climate change but the most affected by its consequences – have the least resources and infrastructure to be able to adequately address these consequences. Because the impacts of climate change are so diverse, it must be addressed in multiple arenas. There needs to be a focus both on local communities’ adaptation, and on national and international economic, social and political support systems. Focusing on disaster risk reduction will help communities prepare for natural disasters that might strike their areas, like the Pacific nations are doing with improving their tsunami warning systems. There also need to be concerted efforts to help communities mitigate the impacts of natural disasters when they strike, to accelerate the delivery of emergency humanitarian aid and to help devastated communities rebuild more rapidly, decreasing the time that populations spend displaced.
