Climate change and those on the margins
Here is an article from Reuters this week. The popular press has picked up on the disproportiantely severe effects of climate change on the world’s poor and indigenous peoples.Minorities the forgotten victims of climate changeMon Mar 10, 2008 9:00pm EDTBy Jeremy LovellLONDON, March 11 (Reuters) – Minorities and indigenous peoplefrequently bear the brunt of the ravages of climate change but alsooften come last on the aid list because they are on the margins ofsociety, a report said on Tuesday.Some are even the victims of efforts to tackle global warming such asclearing tracts of land and forest for growing biofuels, according to”State of the World’s Minorities 2008″ report from Minority RightsGroup International (MRG).”Climate change has finally made it to the top of the internationalagenda at every level but…recognition of the acute difficultiesthat minorities face is often missing,” said MRG’s policy chiefIshbel Matheson. “From the immediate aftermath of a disaster to the point of designingpolicy on climate change — the unique situation of minority andindigenous groups is rarely considered.”Scientists say global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to carbon emissions fromburning fossil fuels for power and transport.This will melt ice caps, raise sea levels and cause more floods,droughts and storms, putting millions of people at risk.The MRG report said forgotten minority groups often live in areasrejected by the wealthy because of their riskier location.Indigenous peoples also often inhabit marginal lands and, becausethey depend on nature for their survival, face double jeopardy fromthe changing climate which is altering growing seasons and rainfallpatterns, it said.And when disasters hit and relief efforts swing into action, thesesame groups are often the worst affected but the last to be helped,the report said.It noted similar difficulties facing the Dalits of India, the Roma ofSlovakia, the Rama of Nicaragua and the Inuit of the Arctic and saidgovernments had to start building their plight into policies onclimate change.The push into biofuels and moves to offer incentives to preventdeforestation were cases in point, it said.Mass clearance of land for biofuels was not only not helping theenvironment, it was depriving local people of their livelihoods.And any deal struck on deforestation in negotiations to extend andexpand the Kyoto climate change protocol beyond 2012 must be flexibleenough to allow indigenous people to carry on their way of life, thereport said.”Not only are minorities and indigenous groups disproportionatelysuffering as a result of climate change but they are affected by whatthe world sees as solutions to climate change,” Matheson said.The annual report, which this year focuses on the impact of climatechange, said it was high time the poor and marginalised people of theworld were put on the political map.”There is now a greater urgency to make these voices heard in theclimate change debate,” Matheson said. (Editing by Kate Kelland)
