Climate change and poverty: Who will you think about this Christmas?

The below post is from Renee Barnes in response to TOTO Challenge #1

When politicians (Kevin Rudd included) demurely defend their inadequate, or lack of, action on climate change they are asking you to think of this person:

Source: istockphoto

They invoke this picture by chanting: “not at the expense of the economy”. It makes the voting public envisage those of us who are in relative comfort and have enjoyed unprecedented years of economic boom. They want us to think about having less disposable income to buy the latest mod-cons, potential job losses and struggles to make mortgage repayments. And while these may be very relevant and significant concerns for some, this rhetoric does not leave you room to think about this person:

Source: istockphoto

You see, for the world’s poorest, climate change could quite literally mean the difference between life and death.  Put simply, growing food depends on weather and climate. Small-scale farmers, in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, rely heavily on naturally occurring rain resources and planned irrigation is minimal. This is why the continent is so susceptible to famine. Add to this climate change, which is expected to reduce the amount of rain received on the continent and the problem will be worse. Malnutrition from famines will lead to weak immune systems and disease will be prevalent.

Other developing nations will also be hit. Low-lying Bangladesh and Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta, for example, could lose much of their rice-growing areas if seas rise only three feet, a figure well within possible projections for this century.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a quasi-UN body, has released several reports which highlight these issues.

The key findings included:

-        75-250 million people across Africa could face water shortages by 2020

-        Agriculture fed by rainfall could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020

-        Crop yields could increase by 20% in East and Southeast Asia, but decrease by up to 30% in Central and South Asia

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a think-tank funded by governments and private organisations, estimates 5 million more children will be malnourished because of predicted climate change than would be if the change didn’t occur.  The World Health Organisation (WHO) also released its own chilling assessment which found that human-induced changes in the Earth’s climate will lead to more than 150,000 deaths every year.

A few statistics that some members of the Australian Liberal Party may need to cast an eye over as they still debate whether climate change actually exists.

So what can we do? Political will, above all, is required. And politicians are driven by polls and the possibility of election losses.

So I propose a voter-lead political campaign. Any political campaign is infused with rhetoric. During the last federal election a popular Melbourne radio host used the mantra “people not trees” in relation to debate over the logging of Tasmania’s old-growth forests. So in this political campaign, I call on you to invoke the mantra “people not dollars”.  In doing so you will be keeping that picture of an African child firmly in mind and help motivate politicians to take this threat seriously and make a real change.