/** iucc.climfacts: 19.0 **/
** Topic: Fact Sheet No:111 **
** Written 11:13 am  Oct 28, 1992 by gn:iucc in cdp:iucc.climfacts **
Impacts of climate change

Fact Sheet 111

Why the poor are most vulnerable

  The predicted impacts of climate change would probably
exacerbate hunger and poverty around the world. New and
fluctuating weather patterns could have a strongly negative impact
on economic activity, particularly in the natural resources
sector. People who are highly dependent on farming, fishing, or
forestry might even see their livelihoods destroyed by reduced
rainfall, degraded soils, and impoverished forests and fishing
grounds.

  The poor would suffer the most because they have fewer options
for responding to climate change. For example, they would find it
more difficult to change over to new crops requiring less water,
to pump water and irrigate, to extend their cultivatable land, or
to adopt more intensive fishing methods. These solutions typically
require expensive inputs such as machinery or fossil-fuel energy.
The urban poor would also be at high risk. Not only might their
food supplies be disrupted, but the shelters and city
infrastructure upon which they rely may prove inadequate in
changed and volatile weather conditions. The poor would lose out
further if outside investors avoid or abandon areas at high risk
from climate change.

  The most vulnerable among the poor would be the women and
children. Because women tend to be less geographically and
occupationally mobile than men, they would find it harder to
escape from their debilitated farms and forests. Families would be
disrupted as able-bodied men moved away. Confirming evidence for
this comes from the African drought of the early 1980s, when
three-quarters of the 150 million victims were women and
children.1 Children would also face a heightened risk from
disease. If temperatures rise, and if the ozone layer continues to
thin and to let through increased ultraviolet radiation, virulent
pathogens may be strengthened while human immunity responses are
weakened. Greater health risks would menace young and malnourished
children, the ill, the old, and the unsheltered.

  Mass migrations might increase. If climate change has severe
impacts, then waves of refugees and immigrants would probably move
from the most affected regions to those that are least vulnerable.
The likeliest movements would be from rural to urban areas within
national borders, and from the South to the North across national
borders. Such migrations would probably become an additional
source of social and political conflict. (See fact sheet 112.)


  Displaced and impoverished populations would suffer an erosion
of their cultural identity. Living in a situation of constant
emergency, the victims of climate change may have little choice
but to adopt ecologically and socially unsustainable ways of
living, especially when migrating to large metropolitan areas. The
resulting disruption to their culture might create social and
political problems which become just as intractable as the
environmental problems that caused them in the first place. (See
fact sheet 118.)



For further reading:

UNEP,  The State of the Environment 1990: Children and the
Environment , UNEP (1990).

UNICEF, UNFPA & UNIFEM.  World's Women: The Trends and Statistics
1970-1990 , United Nations: New York (1991).


Notes:

1 UNICEF & UNEP, p. 42.

* ********************************************************************
* Last revised August 1992 by the Information Unit on Climate Change,*
* UNEP, Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland.          *
* tel: (+41) 22 789-4062                                             *
* fax: (+41) 22 789-4073                                             *
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