The humanitarian impact of climate change is becoming disastrous. Photo Credit: Flickr

Donors should provide an additional 2 billion USD annually for disaster relief programmes until 2015 to deal with the global food shortages and increasing frequency of natural disasters that will be caused by climate change, the UN Development Programme warns today.

"Today's problem is tomorrow's emergency," Cecille Ugaz, deputy director of the UNDP Human Development Report, told IRIN. "Basically, temperatures are going to keep rising and it's likely we will have to keep protecting vulnerable people until at least 2050."

"Even as we advocate for mitigation of climate change, politicians around the world have to understand that the world is already experiencing some effects," she said.

Bad Timing

The agency's call for more money comes as humanitarian projects are already more than 50 percent under-funded, according to the latest UN Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) review.

Simon Maxwell, Director of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London said UNDP's request might be optimistic.

Emergency aid donors are currently grappling with one of the most expensive years for natural disasters on record.

"Let's not overreach ourselves," he said. "More aid is needed, but we'll be doing very well if we manage to reach existing commitments...Our key priority is to stop countries defaulting on their existing commitments. Let's not set ourselves up to fail."

Emergency aid donors are currently grappling with one of the most expensive years for natural disasters on record.

Some 200 million people - 96 percent of them living in Africa - are already affected by natural disasters every year according to the UN, more than seven times the number caught up in conflict.

By mid-November 15 ‘flash appeals' for emergency funds had been launched by the UN's humanitarian agency (OCHA) - the most it has ever launched in one year - as floods hit four times as often in 2007 as in the year before.

All but one of the OCHA appeals were in response to climate-related disasters.

Flash appeals for flood-hit Burkina Faso received 2.3 percent of what was requested, Dominican Republic 23 percent and for the West Africa region which experienced the worst floods in decades, 25 percent.

New Approaches Needed

Piling on pressure for increased funding, in a report released on 25 November the poverty NGO Oxfam warned that donors as well as humanitarian agencies are struggling to keep up with the challenge of this increase in the frequency and scale of natural disasters.

"New approaches to humanitarian action are needed as well as new money," Oxfam said. "Humanitarian response is still skewed, for example to high-profile disasters, and it will certainly be woefully inadequate as global temperatures continue to rise, unless action is taken quickly."

The increased frequency of natural disasters seen in 2007 is likely to continue, with cyclones, typhoons, mudslides and floods happening more frequently.

And UNDP's human development report states that the increased frequency of natural disasters seen in 2007 is likely to continue, with cyclones, typhoons, mudslides and floods happening more frequently in areas already experiencing them, and occurring in places that have not seen such phenomena before.

In addition, the world will face new hazards especially rises in sea level and temperature, the humanitarian effects of which remain to be seen.

Dry areas mostly in Africa and Asia will grow from 60 million to 90 million hectares in this period. By 2025, UNDP says 3 billion people will live in areas that have water shortages.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 85 percent of people will be "water poor," up from 30 percent now. In North Africa, water availability will decrease by 50 percent, and China and India will also be affected, UNDP predicts.

By 2080, world cereal production will have fallen by 25 percent and there will be an increase from 75 to 120 million people around the world affected by malnutrition.

More Frequency and Intensity

"We're worried," said Jenty Kirsch-Wood, a climate change expert at OCHA in Geneva, speaking to journalists on 21 November about the expected humanitarian impact of climate change.

Currently, 80 percent of the disasters that happen around the world are handled internally by national authorities and communities themselves without outside intervention but with the greater frequency and intensity of disasters predicted, that is going to change, OCHA's Kirsch-Wood warned.

"The frequency of climate-related hazards is going to increase and while we know a community might be good at coping with one or two cyclones in a season, it is too much to ask them to cope with three or four."

Killer epidemics like malaria and dengue fever will start occurring in areas that were previously deemed immune.

Killer epidemics like malaria and dengue fever will start occurring in areas that were previously deemed immune as rainfall shifts. Shrinking water sources will mean more cholera and diarrhea, both common causes of death especially among children.

The increased burden of food shortage related problems will pose the greatest challenge to existing humanitarian operations, according to OCHA.

"We need to get better at understanding food security as it is probably going to come up more and more in the way humanitarian work functions," Kirsch-Wood said. "We will have to reassess our understanding of risk and engage more with the scientific community."

Preparedness a Priority

With disasters increasing and funds likely to remain in short supply, disaster preparedness and prevention should be a priority for cost-conscious donors, according to OCHA.

Former UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland calculated that 1 USD spent on preventing disasters from affecting people saves between 4 USD and 7 USD that would otherwise go to responding to a humanitarian emergency after a disaster.

"We know there is a need for greater preparedness but I cannot underline enough that in the current global humanitarian system there are no clear funds allocated necessarily for this," Kirsch-Wood said.




Reprinted with permission from IRIN News.org © IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service. This article does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies.

To read another Global Envision article about climate change in Africa, see Africa Faces Global Warming.



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