Climate Chaos
Climate change is already adversely affecting human lives and livelihoods in developing countries. The effects of climate change include food insecurity, water scarcity, ill health, migration, loss of biodiversity and an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, all of which hit the poorest hardest. Climate change threatens attainment of the MDGs and places 40% of international poverty reduction investment at risk. Global and domestic action is needed to halt human-induced climate change (mitigation) and increase support to developing countries to deal with its effects (adaptation).
Mitigation
Failure to achieve adequate climate stability will disproportionately harm poor people and poor countries dependent on already damaged and vulnerable ecosystems, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. This will result in additional costs of humanitarian aid, conflict response and political and economic instability. The Kyoto Protocol is a first step towards addressing the threat of climate change, but it does not go far enough, and an equitable post-2012 agreement is now needed.
Micah Challenge calls for the G8 to:
- Prioritise negotiating a new global agreement on climate change that will keep global warming at less than +2 degrees, ensure the irreversible decline of greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 and safeguards sustainable development in poor countries.
- Ensure that negotiations on this agreement begin in Bali in 2007 and are concluded by 2008
- Commit to reducing collective emission by 60-80% from 1990 levels by 2050, and to introduce domestic carbon budgets that will deliver sustained annual reductions, to reach at least a 30% reduction in emissions by 2020.
The UK government should also establish a Carbon Budget which covers all sectors of the economy to cut emissions by an average of at least 3 percent per annum. The government should use all the tax, incentive and regulatory tools at its disposal to ensure the target is met, and establish a suitable framework for parliamentary scrutiny and reporting.
Adaptation
Helping poor communities adapt to inevitable climate change is essential if progress is to be made with reducing poverty. Yet climate-related risk is frequently ignored in national development and poverty reduction planning. Climate change risks should be assessed and mitigated within the design and implementation of development initiatives if these are to be sustainable. Special funds or additional aid for adaptation should not segregate climate change as a separate issue: responding to climate change should always be linked to, and ‘mainstreamed’ within, development processes. However, funding for climate change adaptation should be in addition to the 0.7% of GNI already promised for aid.
Micah Challenge calls on the G8 to:
- Give all necessary support to developing countries to help them adapt to climate change and gain access to sufficient low/zero carbon technology to grow sustainably
- Substantially increase funding for adaptation including through the UNFCCC adaptation funds and Nairobi programme of work (ensuring that these contribute to the ‘mainstreaming’ of climate change within development and poverty reduction processes). Agreement must be reached on the management of the Adaptation Fund in 2007 so that finances can be released for urgent, on-the-ground adaptation work in developing countries.
