From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

FROM POVERTY TO POWERhigher confidence, and more robust findings, based on the availabilityof more up-to-date studies covering a wider area compared withprevious reports. It concluded that human-induced climate change isnow ‘unequivocal’, is already well under way, and is occurring fasterthan expected. 94The IPCC’s grim global prognosis includes more erratic and severeweather patterns and further rises in sea levels. Low-lying island statessuch as Kiribati, the Maldives, and Tuvalu could disappear altogether,while countries such as Viet Nam and Egypt face devastation alongtheir coasts: a one-metre rise in sea levels (an estimate by the WorldBank of the possible impact of climate change) would flood the homesof 10 per cent of their populations, inundating major cities, andprompting massive refugee crises. The World Bank study concluded,‘Within this century, hundreds of millions of people are likely to bedisplaced by sea level rise; accompanying economic and ecologicaldamage will be severe for many. The world has not previously faced acrisis on this scale.’ 95The IPCC’s 2007 Assessment Report concluded that, withouturgent action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s averagesurface temperature is likely to increase by between 2°C and 4.5°C bythe year 2100, with a ‘best estimate’ of 3°C. 96 A growing body of scientificevidence supports the conclusion that warming beyond 2°C constitutesa ‘dangerous’ level of climate change. 97 In many countries, poorcommunities are already facing dangerous impacts. While any estimateof the casualties inflicted by climate change is necessarily approximate,WHO suggests that the warming and precipitation trends attributableto man-made climate change over the past 30 years already claimmore than 150,000 lives a year – most of them in poor countries. 98The deep injustice of climate change is that those with the leasthistorical responsibility stand to suffer most from its predicted consequences.Many of the citizens of developing countries in equatorialregions, who have historically produced very low levels of greenhousegases per capita, will be hardest hit. This is due to the severity of thepredicted environmental changes in these countries and to thecountries’ lack of resources to cope with them.258