CLIMATE CHANGE, ENEMY OF THE POOR

According to a study presented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on November 27, 2007, the climate change threatens to make fail the already weak international efforts to reduce poverty. This is the conclusion of the last World Human Development Report 2007/2008. A series of indexes such as gross domestic product, income, life expectancy, education, etc., from 177 countries were evaluated on this report. The novelty of this research is a special chapter titled: “Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world”. The experts say that global warming could stall and then reverse the progress built up over generations, not only to reduce poverty, but also in fields such as health, nutrition, education, etc.

Millennium Development Goals

They add that if the efforts to reverse the damages produced by the greenhouse gases fail, we will see an increase of the social inequality and 40% of the poorest population (2.600 million people) will have a future with fewer opportunities. That means that the emission of CO2 to the atmosphere has become one of the most worrying obstacles to reach in 2015 the Millennium Development Goals fixed by the UN seven years ago. “We could face the setback of the Human Development for the first time in 30 years"

Latin America

The situation is worrying for several Latin American countries whose progress in the last years has enable them to appear with other 15 developed countries, in a list that joins the report. But an increase of 2 degrees Celsius in the planet’s temperature would mean, for example, losses of the 60% of the corn production that is the source of income of 2 million Mexican people. The retreating of the glaciers (phenomenon that is already observed in Peru, Chile and Argentina) would leave million people without running water by the time some other millions would be displaced through flooding.

Paradojas

The study also shows one of the biggest contradictions registered in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is calculated that around 45 million people do not have electricity supply there. The half of this figure is located in Haiti, Honduras, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Peru. Paradoxically, the emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere are almost insignificant, compared to the total emissions. According to the document, only Netherlands emits more CO2 than Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Uruguay and all the Central America countries together.

Enclosed to this alarming panorama, the report of the UNDP also drew up a series of objectives and recommendations that was analysed in the summit on climate change held in Bali, Indonesia in December.

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