Climate Change: A majorthreat to human

development

What is human development?

• Human development is a process of enlarging people’s choices. The most critical ones are to lead a long and healthy life, to be educated and to enjoy a decent standard of living. Additional choices include political freedom, guaranteed human rights and self-respect’ (HDRO 1990)

• Puts human beings at the centre, not incomes…

• ‘...people are the real wealth of a nation.

• ...The basic objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to live long, healthy and creative lives’ (HDRO 1990)

Key aspects ofhuman development

• Humans beings are ends not means

• Incomes are means not end

• It focus on Basic Needs, but includes other issues –freedom, democracy, gender, environment, communities, culture

• Considers topics which may affect human beings’potential in all contexts (rich or poor countries). It is open ended.

• Freedom to choose given priority. HD concerns widening human choices.

• Accepts that humans are an important resource as well as being the objective of development.

The 21st Century climate challengeRising CO2 emissions are pushing up stocks & increasing temperatures

– In the past 100 years the earth has warmed 0.70C

– Atmospheric concentrations of CO2are increasing at 1.9 ppm each year. It reached 379 ppm in 2005

– Between 2000 and 2005 an average of 26 Gt of CO2 was released into the atmosphere each year

The 21st Century climate challenge

Four distinctive characteristics:

– It is cumulative– The effects are irreversible – Large time lags – today’s

emissions are tomorrow’s problems

– It is global

Tackling Climate Change: Global carbon accounting

• Defining dangerous – keeping within 2oC

• Establishing a 21st Century carbon budget

• Defining a sustainable emission’s pathway

• The problem of inertia– the case for adaptation

The 21st Century carbon budget is set for early expiry

Some people walk more lightly than others

• The UK (population 60 million) emits more CO2 than Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan and Vietnam (total population 472 million)

• The state of Texas (population 23 million) has a deeper footprint than the whole sub-Saharan Africa (720 million people)

• The 19 million people living in New York have a deeper footprint than the 766 million people living in the 50 least developed countries

The distribution of current emissions points to an inverse relationship between climate

change vulnerability andresponsibility

Risk, Vulnerability and Climate Change

• Climate risk is a fact for the entire world

• Vulnerability is a measure of capacity to manage climate hazards without suffering a long-term potentially irreversible loss of well-being

The state of human development shapes the process by which risk is converted into

vulnerability

Disaster risk is skewed towards developing countries

• 1 in 19 people are affected in developing countries

• The corresponding number is 1 in 1,500 in OECD countries

A risk differential of 79

“Human Rights and the environment are interdependent and interrelated”

Mary Robinson

Five human development tipping points:

Reduced agricultural productivity

Collapse of ecosystems

Heightened water insecurity – glacial melting

Increased health risks

Increased exposure to extreme weather events – tropical storms, coastal flooding, sea level rise

The human development backdrop

The backdrop includes some good news

– The share of the population living on less than US$ 1 a day has fallen from 29 percent in 1990 to 18 percent in 2004

– Extreme poverty fell by 135 million between 1999 and 2005

– During the period 1990 to 2004, child mortality rates have fallen from 106 deaths per 1,000 live births to 83

– Life expectancy for developing countries has increased from 56 (1970-75) to 65 (2000-05)

Other news are not as good…

• Poverty, child mortality and malnutrition

– There are still around 1 billion people living on less than a dollar a day. The 1st MDG could be missed by around 380 million people

– Around 28 percent of children in LDCs are underweight or stunted.

– Only 32 countries (of 147) are on track to achieve the MDG on child mortality

• Inequality

– More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening

– Underlying inequalities act as a barrier for early recovery after shocks

Among the threats to human development identified by Fighting climate change:

• Additional 600 million people facing malnutrition

• Productivity losses of 26 percent by 2060 in semi-arid areas of sub-Saharan Africa causing revenue losses in excess to the total bilateral aid to the region in 2005

• 1.8 billion people facing water stress• Displacement of up to 332 million people in

coastal and low-lying areas• Additional 400 million people facing the risk of

malaria

Forces unleashed by global warming could stall and then reverse progress built up over

generations

Extreme weather events• The number of additional people experiencing

coastal flooding could range from 134 to 332million for a 3o- 4o increase in temperature.

• Tropical storms could raise the figure to 371 millionby the end of the 21st century

• Possible consequences of one meter rise in sea level

– In Lower Egypt, 6 million people displaced and 4,500 kms2 of farmland flooded

– In Vietnam, 22 million people displaced– In Bangladesh, 18 percent of land area could be

inundated affecting 11 percent of the population– In the Maldives, more than 80 percent of land area is

less than 1 meter above sea level

Low human development trapsThe potential human costs of climate

change have been understated

• In Ethiopia, children exposed to a drought in early childhood are 36 percent more likely to be malnourished five years later – a figure that translates into 2 million additional cases of child malnutrition

• Indian women born during a drought or a flood in the 1970s were 19 percent less likely to ever attend primary school

Climate related risks force people into downward spirals of disadvantage that undermine future

opportunities

Further impacts of climatic events

• Climate hazards have an inmediate impact on poverty and deprivation. They can also have long term – human development effects

– Suffering from a climate related disaster diminishes the transition out from poverty: Peru 2002-2006.

– Municipalities that experienced floods in Mexico showed an increase in food poverty of 3.5% . Municipalities that experienced droughts 4.2%

– In Nepal, children who suffered from a drought had worse nutritional outcomes

– Effects on inequality – poorer households tend to lose a higher proportion of their income in disasters.

– In Peru during the period 2001-2005, household consumption dropped by 3.8% in the poorest quintile affected by a disaster compared to 1.2% in the wealthiest quintile.

– In Mexico between 1980 and 2006, in the poorest municipalities 10 to 50% of housing was affected by disasters. The percentage in richer municipalities was less than 10%.

• Lowering risk is the most important element in the design of public policies to protect human development

• Dietary adjustments– Substituted meat for vegetables– Eat smaller portions– Reduced number of meals per day

• Reducing expenditures

• Generating cash for food– Depleting savings– Borrowing money– Selling livestock or poultry– Selling house or household items– Sending children to look for money

• Migrating?

All these options may not be available to households in all contexts

When adopted in situations of distress may not be conducive to enhancing human development

How do people cope with shocks?

Adapting to the inevitable: national action and

international cooperation

“If you are neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.”

Montesquieu

The adaptation challenge

• Exposure to the risk of climate disasters is expected to rise

– Expansion of unplanned human settlements, – Environmental degradation and – Marginalization of rural populations

• Adaptation needs to be brought to the top of the agenda for poverty reduction

– Risks and vulnerabilities need to be included in national planning and integrated into the framework of poverty reduction strategies

Climate change is likely to exacerbate competition for already scarce productive resource – water, land.

Adaptation needs to prevent further marginalizationand protect the rights of those not fully integrated

into the market economy and the circuit of international exchanges

• By mid-2007, actual multilateral financing delivered through UNFCCC funds US$ reached 26 million

• This is equivalent to one week spending in floods defences in the UK

• Amounts are not the only problem. Timing and fulfillment of pledges present further limitations

Towards adaptation apartheid?Developed country investments dwarf

adaptation funds

Economic growth is not the same as human development...

• Climate change will not announce itself as an apocalyptic event. It will affect rainfall, temperatures and water availability for agriculture especially in vulnerable areas

• Over the next few decades, the world needs an energy revolution that enables all countries to become low carboneconomies

• That revolution has to start in the developed world. The first thing is to put a price on carbon emissions

• Governments have a crucial role in setting regulatory standards and supporting low carbon research

• Pre-existing conditional cash transfers work as a safety net in presence of climatic events

• Access to formal financial services mitigates negative effects (El Salvador)

Intensive versus extensive risk

Tackling Climate Change: Global carbon accounting

• Defining dangerous – keeping within 2oC increase from the start of the industrial era (1861-1890)

• Establishing a 21st Century carbon budget at 1,456 Gt CO2

• Defining a sustainable emission’s pathway

• The problem of inertia– the case for adaptation

Charting a course away dangerous climate change

The sustainable emissions pathway is as follows

– The world – cuts of 50 percent by 2050

– Developed countries – cuts of 80 percent by 2050

– Developing countries – cuts of 20 percent by 2050

with respect to 1990

The Human Development Report underscores that:• The world has less than a decade to avoid dangerous

climate change that could bring unprecedented human development reversals

• Climate change erodes human potential, freedoms and human rights

• Climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor and future generations, constituencies with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who face the most immediate and most severe human costs

• The Human Development Report 2007/2008 calls for a ‘twin track’ approach that combines stringent mitigationto limit 21st Century warming to less than 2 degree centigrade, with strengthened international cooperation on adaptation

• Winning the battle against climate change will require far-reaching changes in the way we think about ecological interdependence, about social justice and the human rights and entitlements of the poor and future generations

• The world has less than a decade to avoid dangerous climate change that could bring unprecedented human development reversals

• Climate change erodes human potential, freedomsand human rights

• Climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor and future generations, constituencies with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who face the most immediate and most severe human costs

• The Human Development Report 2007/2008 calls for a ‘twin track’ approach that combines stringent mitigation to limit 21st Century warming to less than 2 degree centigrade, with strengthened international cooperation on adaptation

How many planets?

• The 21st century carbon budget amounts to 1,456 Gt or around 14.5 Gt CO2 per year

• Total CO2 emissions in 2004 stood at 29 Gt

• If every person living in the developing world would have the same carbon footprint than an average person in the US or Canada, we would need the equivalent to nine planets to absorb the CO2