-with reference to the
Rio declaration
Gradually, climate
change is inching closer to achieving a status (though unpleasant) of the
deadliest phenomenon to have happened to human race and the ecology since the
past three-four centuries.
Like it or not –
believe it or not, it has wiped away thousands of human and animal species
directly and indirectly, leading to something of an extinction of a sort to
some animal species.
It is in this regard
that a landmark conference was held in Rio – Brazil in 1992, to strategize and
develop a blueprint towards improving the situation.
The
United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, 3-14 June 1992 has since been described as
the beginning of an awakening to the realities of climate change, which
scientists predicted about four to five decades prior to the conference.
The two-week Earth
Summit was the climax of a process, began in December 1989, of planning,
education and negotiations among all member states of the United Nations,
leading to the adoption of Agenda 21,a wide-ranging blueprint for action to
achieve sustainable development worldwide.
While the Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro was unprecedented for a UN conference, in terms of both its size
and the scope of its concerns, it also sought to help governments rethink
economic development and find ways to halt the destruction of irreplaceable
natural resources and pollution of the planet as a result of the climate
inconsistencies.
Hundreds of thousands
of people from all walks of life were drawn into the Rio process and persuaded
their leaders to join other nations in making the difficult decisions needed to
ensure a healthy planet for generations to come.
The Summit’s message —
that nothing less than a transformation of our attitudes and behaviour would
bring about the necessary changes — was transmitted by almost 10,000 on-site
journalists and heard by millions around the world. It reflected the complexity
of the problems facing the world: that poverty as well as excessive consumption
by affluent populations place damaging stress on the environment.
It influenced all
subsequent UN conferences, which have examined the relationship between human
rights, population, social development, women and human settlements — and the
need for environmentally sustainable development. The World Conference on Human
Rights, held in Vienna in 1993, for example, underscored the right of people to
a healthy environment and the right to development, controversial demands that
had been met with resistance from some member states.
Governments recognized
the need to redirect international and national plans and policies to ensure
that all economic decisions fully took into account any environmental impact,
but twenty years after the first global environment conference, the message has
produced results, making eco-efficiency a guiding principle for business and
governments alike, but to what end?.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) refers to climate change
as any change in the state of the climate that can be identified by changes in
the mean/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an
extended period, typically decades or longer.
However, according to
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), climate
change is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the
composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate
variability observed over comparable time periods.
The phenomenon may be
limited to a specific geographical region or may occur across the whole earth –
which is the case in the world today. Climate change which is a long term change
in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods of time that
range from decades to millions of years.
Scientific opinion has
it that the Earth’s climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is
extremely likely that humans are causing most of it through activities that
increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as
deforestation and burning fossil fuels.
Science is not a house
of cards, ready to topple if you remove one line of evidence. Instead, it is
like a jigsaw puzzle. As the body of evidence builds, we get a clearer picture
of what is driving our climate.
We now have many lines
of evidence all pointing to a single, consistent answer – the main driver of
global warming is rising carbon dioxide levels from our fossil fuel burning,
says John Cook who has been studying issues of the climate and indicators of a
human fingerprint on climate change.
With rapid climate
change and weather variations, one- fourth of earth’s species could be headed
for extinction by 2050, according to scientists, and this has sent governments
into deep-thinking and policy redirection to ensure what has been described as
a ‘human catastrophe’ , will not see the light of day, at least momentarily.
For thousands of years,
people have expected the climate to remain more-or-less the same while the
weather varies and seasons sometimes disappoint.
Using forecasts no more
sophisticated than these, the human race has prospered.
But are things
different now?
For the fifth time, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) claims they are – the
difference, the body claims is increased human emissions of carbon dioxide, a
colourless odourless gas; a gas that is a by-product of growing prosperity.
The IPPC assumes that a
relatively small human contribution of the gas will trap the warmth of the sun
and cause dangerous warming in the future.
Other scientists
contest that assumptions on the grounds that the effect of the gas is smaller
than IPPC assumes, and that the climate is so complex and insufficiently
understood that the net effect of human emissions on warming cannot be
calculated with any confidence.
Climate
change is already beginning to transform life on earth, and it’s increasingly
reaching alarming heights – which is hanging around the necks of countries like
an albatross.
Around the globe,
seasons are shifting, temperatures are climbing through the rooftops and sea
levels are rising beyond imaginable limits, meanwhile, our planet must still
supply us – and all living things – with air, water, food and safe havens to live,
so you can imagine.
If we as a collective
fail to act towards achieving some kind of freedom from the shackles and
vagaries of the climate, the phenomenon will rapidly alter the lands and waters
we all depend upon for survival, leaving our children and later generations,
with a very different world and posterity will not be kind to us.
Talk of the devastating
backlash of temperature variations to human species as well as the ecology of
the earth, a lot more needs to be done urgently to arrest an impending global
disaster.
A few of the most
dangerous consequences of climate change can be discussed ranging from risks to
wildlife, increased risk of drought, fire, floods and stronger storms hitting
the earth – and to be fair, these are occurrences that will surely impact our
lives and places we care about and have evidently ravaged regions in the
Americas, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.
Sandstorms in the gulf
region, tsunamis in Asia and severe drought in parts of Africa are testament to
the debilitating consequences of climate change – at least scientists have
proven.
Temperature changes
have been scientifically proven to be directly related to
more heat-related illnesses and diseases which may include heat strokes,
exhaustions, cramps and rash and Ghana has not been spared some of these cases.
A changing climate thus
affects population health: clean air and water, sufficient food, natural
constraints on infectious disease agents, and the adequacy and security of
shelter. A more variable climate leads to higher levels of some air pollutants
and more frequent extreme weather events.
It subsequently increases
the rates and ranges of transmission of infectious diseases through unclean
water and contaminated food, and by affecting vector organisms and intermediate
host species that harbor the infectious agent (such as cattle and rodents).
As warming proceeds,
the severity of weather-related disasters will increase - and appears to have
done so in a number of regions of the world over the past several decades.
Therefore, in summary,
global warming, together with resultant changes in food and water supplies, can
indirectly cause increases in a range of adverse health outcomes, including
malnutrition, diarrhea, injuries, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and
water-borne and insect-transmitted diseases.
A World Health Organization
Commission on Social Determinants of Health report, points out that
disadvantaged communities are likely to shoulder a disproportionate share of
the burden of climate change because of their increased exposure and vulnerability
to health threats.
Over 90 percent of
malaria and diarrhea deaths are borne by children aged 5 years or younger, mostly
in developing countries whose annual Gross Domestic Product and income returns
are unable to meet the economic needs of these countries.
Other severely affected
population groups include women, the elderly and people living in small developing
states and other coastal regions, mega-cities or mountainous areas.
Droughts and floods are constantly destroying
especially the crops and harvest of farmers in developing countries, leaving
them in a miserable situation. In most of the African countries, and in Ghana
specifically, the majority of the workforce is working in the agricultural
sector (largest income earner) but their contributions are only a little
percentage to the national Gross Domestic Product of these countries.
Most of
the farmers live in sincere poverty, struggling with life and are often forced
to accept a second or third job in order to survive, yet their farms are not
spared the devastation of the climate.
Rain-fed agriculture, which is the most practiced
in these parts are greatly affected – farmers are not able to predict correctly
the rainfall patterns for similar reasons of temperature and climate
variations. These are the harsh realities peasants and commercial farmers have
to contend with.
In parts of Ghana, and other African countries,
the slightest rains leave magnitudes of flood in their wake, submerging
plantations, destroying properties and livelihoods.
Recent reports of floods in the Upper East and
Upper West regions are evidences to the worrying trend, which has become an
annual occurrence – leaving the country to cough up resources to provide relief
facilities to displaced persons in such areas.
A report on the global human impact of climate
change published by the Global Humanitarian Forum in 2009, estimated more than
300,000 deaths and about $125
billion in economic losses each year, and indicating that most climate change
induced mortality is due to worsening floods and droughts in developing
countries.
It has therefore emerged a necessary evil to discuss
the vulnerability of the poor with regard to climate change and possible
adaptation and mitigation strategies which have to be developed by all
stakeholders in the country, if not the entire West African and African regions.
Climate change is
thought to have brought about severe and permanent alterations to the planet’s
geological, biological and ecological systems. The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) contended in 2003 that “there is new and stronger
evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is
attributable to human activities”.
These changes have led
to the emergence of large-scale environmental hazards to human health, such as
extreme weather, ozone depletion, increased danger of wildland fires, loss of
biodiversity, stresses to food-producing systems and the global spread of
infectious diseases.
The World Health
Organization (WHO) estimates that 160,000 deaths, since 1950, are directly attributable
to climate change, and this is desperately unacceptable – to which countries
must rise up to.
Till date, a neglected
aspect of the climate change debate, has been on the geophysical changes
related to global warming, while a lot of the concentration and attention has
almost always been on the impacts of climate change on health, food supply,
economic growth, migration, security, societal change, and public goods, such
as drinking water.
Climatic changes in
Siberia, for instance, are expected to improve food production and local economic
activity, at least in the short to medium term. Numerous studies suggest,
however, that the current and future impacts of climate change on human society
are and will continue to be overwhelmingly negative.
The majority of the
adverse effects of climate change are experienced by poor and low-income communities
around the world, who have much higher levels of vulnerability to environmental
determinants of health, wealth and other factors, and much lower levels of
capacity available for coping with environmental change.
Patterns of production,
particularly the production of toxic constituents, such as lead in gasoline, or
poisonous waste are being scrutinized in a systematic manner by the UN and
governments alike; with the proposition of alternative sources of energy to
effectively replace the use of fossil fuels which are linked to global climate change.
New reliance on public
transportation systems is being advocated for, in order to reduce emissions
from vehicles, congestion in cities and the health problems caused by polluted
air and environment.
And this advocacy is
gaining grounds in Ghana, with the imminent introduction of an integrated bus
transit system by governments, expected to take effect by close of year.
In 2007, the IPCC
published a report of key vulnerabilities of industry, settlements, and society
to climate change. This assessment included a level of confidence for each key
vulnerability:.
Many think the much talked about climate
change and its repercussions are far away from them – but the earlier these
groups of people become alive to the realities of the day, the better for them
and the nation.
How about if I told you
climate change has dire psychological impacts on individuals?
Well, a 2011 article in the
American Psychologist Report, identified three classes of psychological impacts
from global climate change which directly or otherwise hits the human
population.
While the direct may be
acute or traumatic effects of extreme weather events and a changed environment,
the indirect has to do with threats to emotional well-being based on
observation of impacts and concern or uncertainty about future risks.
Nobody can do any
decent work in a condition of psychological imbalances – therefore health
officials have constantly advocated a new regime of health awareness and health
consciousness which will see individuals begin to take issues of their health a
tad more seriously.
Climate change may
dramatically impact habitat loss, for example, arid conditions may cause the
collapse of rainforests, as has occurred in the past.
A sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35° C, is a threshold at which the
resilience of human systems is no longer able to adequately cool the skin.
Not only would the
habitats and greeneries of the countries be affected, but also water bodies and
other natural resources
And when these happen
and rise to exponential heights, human population as well as other living
species will die.
Scientists have
predicted an extinction of all living races in the coming centuries- but if
this must be prevented, it starts from now!
Human activities, which
have long been described as the overriding cause of the variations in climate
and weather conditions must somehow be looked at critically.
It is only if serious
action is taken in this regard, that we would as a generation potentially spare
ourselves of the predicted extinction scientists talk about.
The Time is Now!
