The humanitarian impact of global warming is receiving increased recognition

There is a need to demystify the concept of climate change so that communities living in rural and depressed areas of South Africa “understand and embrace the message that we communicate,” said the new minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, Buyelwa Sonjica on the commemoration of this year’s World Environment Day on 5 June.

While there is an increasing global tendency to put a humanitarian face on the implications of climate change, the minister said that “we need to raise and enhance awareness around climate change so that the message can become accessible to all citizens, especially the poor who are also the most vulnerable to this phenomenon”.

To what extent the issue of climate change has become one of the most dominating subjects on international agenda, is illustrated by the fact that there has not only been a massive proliferation of conferences, seminars and summits dealing with the subject internationally, but there is hardly an international gathering on any subject nowadays that does not deal with the subject in one way or another.

It has also become an increasingly prominent tendency to highlight the humanitarian implications of the phenomenon and the need for individual communities and urban settlements to prepare for the unavoidable impacts of climate change.

Typical of this tendency was the launch in March this year of the World Humanitarian Forum (WHF), which has the aim of assisting the victims of climate change internationally.

Kofi Annan, the president of the WHF, told 300 delegates to a summit held at the University of Pretoria during March that southern Africa is being threatened by possible social upheaval, increasing poverty, floods and protracted droughts.

Climate change has devastating implications for this part of the world.

He addressed the summit via a satellite video link from Geneva, Switzerland. The summit was held to publicise the launch of the Forum.

Mary Robinson, president of the non-governmental organisation Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, told delegates that the WHF aims to make the world and its policy makers aware of the human face of climate change.

It aims to lead a campaign on behalf of the victims of climate change in the run-up to the climate summit scheduled for December this year in Copenhagen, Denmark, where a new international treaty on climate change is to be negotiated to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

“We will ensure that justice is done in Copenhagen and that rich countries will accommodate and assist the poor ones,”
she said.

Annan also said the WHF will ensure that a new climate treaty is drafted in which assistance to the poor will take central stage. “We cannot afford for Copenhagen to fail. A proper fund, which was already established at the end of 2007 in Bali, Indonesia but has not shown any real progress, will have to be put in place properly in Denmark to assist the poor and vulnerable to adapt to climate change. 

“Rich countries have to assist the poor ones to become green. We are seeking climate justice,” he said, and stressed that the rich have polluted the globe in their quest for wealth and now need to start paying for it.

In a similar vein about the humanitarian impact of climate change, the International Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report in February this year stated it is now accepted that Africa will be exceptionally vulnerable to climate change, and the problem of food security will be exacerbated without significant mitigation and adaption.

Closer to home, the citizens of Cape Town were warned in early June that unless some lifestyle adaptations were made, it would not be possible to retain the city as they know it today.

The warning from the mayoral committee member for Planning and the Environment, Marian Nieuwoudt, came in the wake of a disturbing environmental report on the plummeting quality of water resources and in the sea in the metropole.

At a national climate summit held in Midrand in March, South Africans were warned that they would have to adapt properly to climate variables over the next 10 to 15 years, if they want to deal effectively with climate change in the long run.

However, Dr Emma Archer of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research programme for Natural Resources and the Environment, warned that at this stage the impact of climate change on health and on urban areas is largely neglected by researchers. There is relatively little emphasis on adaption in urban areas, and climate change is not factored into planning in all instances.