G8 Leaders must agree tough action say aid agencies
Read the report here.
More than a billion people could face water shortages and over 250 million people food shortages if world governments fail to urgently agree tough measures to limit global temperature rise to below 2 degrees C from pre-industrial levels, warns a new report published today by leading international aid agencies.
Two days before G8 leaders meet in Heiligendamm, Germany, to discuss proposals for deep long-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, Tearfund, Oxfam, Christian Aid and Practical Action, supported by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and many other groups including several from developing countries, warn that failure to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees C is to “hold the earth and its inhabitants hostage to a future of accelerated warming with catastrophic consequences.”
Rachel Roach, Tearfund Climate Change Advisor and author of the report, said: “The report, Two Degrees, One Chance, summarises the scientific evidence which shows the absolute necessity of keeping global temperature rise as far below 2 degrees C as possible – and the catastrophic implications of exceeding that threshold, especially for poor nations and communities. G8 leaders must acknowledge the urgency of global warming and agree that the world must not exceed a 2 degree global temperature rise”.
She said that agreement at the G8 would be an enormous boost to the campaign to instate a second and tougher phase of the Kyoto Protocol to curb global climate change when the current phase runs out in 2012.
The report, Two Degrees, One Chance, cites the experience of poor communities about what is happening to their climate. It says global warming is leading to changing seasons, abnormal weather, heat waves, droughts and floods. Without drastic action global temperatures could rise by 2-3 degrees C in the next 50 years, and could eventually exceed 5 or 6 degrees. The report warns that if temperatures rise above 2 degrees (above pre-industrial levels):
- Between 1 and 4 billion people could experience water shortages with rises above 2 degrees (1)
- The proportion of land in drought could increase from 3% today, to 8% by 2020 and 30% by end of the century (2)
- 70-80 million more people will be exposed to Malaria in Africa if temperature rises reach 4 degrees (3)
- The already-exploited Amazon rainforest could be pushed over a tipping point by climate change, with some models predicting it becoming impoverished grassland in 50-100 years. (4)
- At 5 degrees large glaciers in the Himalayas could disappear, affecting one quarter of China’s population and millions of people across Asia. (5)
- Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who will host the G8 summit meeting, wants G8 members to agree timetables and targets for major cuts, including.
- Agreement to slow the rise in average temperatures this century to 2 degrees C
- A cut in global emissions by 50% below 1990 levels by 2050
- A rise in energy efficiency in power and transport by 20 percent by 2020.
Antonio Hill, Oxfam International’s climate change policy adviser, said:“G8 countries face two clear and immediate obligations in this year’s G8 summit in Germany, to stop harming by cutting their emissions to keep global warming below 2° C and to start helping poor countries to cope with harm already being caused by paying their share of adaptation funds. The world cannot afford the G8 to come up with more rhetoric that is not backed up by concrete action.”
Andrew Pendleton, Christian Aid’s senior climate analyst, said: “Past efforts by G8 leaders to deal with world poverty are under threat if rich countries do not rapidly tackle climate change. An increase of more than 2 degrees is not inevitable and must be prevented if poverty is to be made history. But heroic action is needed on the part of G8 leaders and their first act of heroism must take place in Heiligendamm.”
Rachel Berger, Practical Action’s climate change policy adviser, said: "G8 leaders must take urgent and ambitious action to reduce emissions; we can't afford to wait. G8 has a moral obligation to reduce emissions and help the world's poorest and most vulnerable in developing countries to adapt to the devastating realities of climate change."