Climate-change diasters kill 300,000 a year

Meera Selva, Associated Press Google News 29 May 09;

LONDON (AP) — Climate-change disasters kill around 300,000 people a year and cause about $125 billion in economic losses, mainly from agriculture, a think-tank led by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan reported Friday.

The Global Humanitarian Forum also estimated that 325 million people are seriously affected by climate change — a number it says will double by 2030, as more people are hit by natural disasters or suffer environmental degradation caused by climate change.

"Climate change is a silent human crisis," Annan said in a statement. "Yet it is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time."

The report suggests that rising sea levels, desertification and changing rainfall patterns are reducing many people's access to safe drinking water and food. This in turn increases diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition.

The report said 99 percent of all people who die due to climate-change related causes live in developing countries, even though those countries generate less than 1 percent of total emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

The report used existing data on weather-related disasters, population trends and economic forecasts to draw its conclusions. It was released ahead of climate change talks in Bonn, Germany, next week, that are to lead to a possible new global treaty on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen in December.

Climate change kills 300,000 a year: study
Yahoo News 29 May 09;

LONDON (AFP) – Climate change is responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people every year and costs 125 billion dollars (90 billion euros) annually, a new report said Friday.

The study, from the Global Humanitarian Forum, claims to be the first to measure the impact of climate change on people globally -- and says it is 325 million of the poorest who suffer most.

It highlights the plight of people in Bangladesh, where millions face regular flooding and cyclones, Uganda, where farmers are plagued by drought and some Caribbean and Pacific islands facing obliteration due to rising seas.

This is despite the world's 50 least developed countries contributing less than one percent of global carbon emissions.

Speaking at the report's launch in London, ex UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said it showed the need for a "bold, post-Kyoto agreement to protect the world" at crunch international climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

"The alternative is mass starvation, mass migration, mass sickness and mass death," Annan, the forum's president, added.

"If political leaders cannot assume responsibility for Copenhagen, they choose instead responsibility for failing humanity."

Annan described climate change as "the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time" and said the world was "at a crossroads" on how to tackle the issue.

The report projects that by 2030, deaths worldwide due to climate change will rise to nearly half a million a year and the cost will hit 300 billion dollars.

It urges developing countries, which account for 99 percent of climate change casualties, to scale up their efforts to adapt for climate change "by a factor of 100."

The vast majority of deaths are caused by gradual environmental degradation which causes problems like malnutrition rather than natural disasters, it said.

The Global Humanitarian Forum was founded in 2007 to work on issues including climate change. The report is also backed by British charity Oxfam.

Climate change causes 315,000 deaths a year
Megan Rowling, Reuters 29 May 09;

LONDON (Reuters) - Climate change kills about 315,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and weather disasters, and the annual death toll is expected to rise to half a million by 2030, a report said on Friday.

The study, commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF), estimates that climate change seriously affects 325 million people every year, a number that will more than double in 20 years to 10 percent of the world's population (now about 6.7 billion).

Economic losses due to global warming amount to over $125 billion annually -- more than the flow of aid from rich to poor nations -- and are expected to rise to $340 billion each year by 2030, according to the report.

"Climate change is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time, causing suffering to hundreds of millions of people worldwide," Kofi Annan, former U.N. secretary-general and GHF president, said in a statement.

"The first hit and worst affected are the world's poorest groups, and yet they have done least to cause the problem."

The report says developing countries bear more than nine-tenths of the human and economic burden of climate change, while the 50 poorest countries contribute less than 1 percent of the carbon emissions that are heating up the planet.

Annan urged governments due to meet at U.N. talks in Copenhagen in December to agree on an effective, fair and binding global pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the world's main mechanism for tackling global warming.

"Copenhagen needs to be the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated," he wrote in an introduction to the report. "The alternative is mass starvation, mass migration and mass sickness."

The study warns that the true human impact of global warming is likely to be far more severe than it predicts, because it uses conservative U.N. scenarios. New scientific evidence points to greater and more rapid climate change.

The report calls for a particular focus on the 500 million people it identifies as extremely vulnerable because they live in poor countries most prone to droughts, floods, storms, sea-level rise and creeping deserts.

Africa is the region most at risk from climate change, home to 15 of the 20 most vulnerable countries, the report says. Other areas also facing the highest level of threat include South Asia and small island developing states.

To avoid the worst outcomes, the report says efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change must be scaled up 100 times in developing countries. International funds pledged for this purpose amount to only $400 million, compared with an average estimated cost of $32 billion annually, it notes.

"Funding from rich countries to help the poor and vulnerable adapt to climate change is not even 1 percent of what is needed," said Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam in Britain and a GHF board member.

"This glaring injustice must be addressed at Copenhagen in December."

(Reporting by Megan Rowling, editing by Tim Pearce)