Christian relief and development agency Tearfund says the G8 summit in Gleneagles has failed the poor by not committing to meaningful measures to protect people suffering the effects of climate change.
Tearfund warns that any progress made on African development at the G8 summit will be fundamentally undermined by failure to commit to urgent action to address the causes and effects of climate change.
Tearfund had been urging the G8 to put into practice the agreements they made three years ago at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. All governments agreed to provide financial and technological assistance to help Africa reduce the effects of climate change and disasters. Tearfund was also calling for G8 governments to ensure that their development policies and programmes are climate proof and climate friendly by 2008. Today’s climate change agreements do not reflect these recommendations.
“With Tony Blair prioritising climate change and Africa at the G8, the summit provided a crucial opportunity for world leaders to act to save millions of lives. Sadly it appears that those with the most power to make urgent life-changing decisions lacked the political will to do so,” says Sarah La Trobe, Tearfund’s senior climate change advisor.
Climate change is already having a devastating impact on many African countries and communities. The scientific predictions are clear: climate change will worsen Africa’s already critical water crisis, it will put millions more at risk of hunger, it will increase the spread of malaria and other diseases and there will be an increase in the frequency and severity of floods and droughts.
70% of Africans depend on agriculture, most of which is rain-fed. Says Archbishop Donald Mtetemela of Tanzania: “Rain is essential to our farming – to be without it is like being without oxygen. We can’t predict when to plant as we have had 50% crop failure for the last four years due to erratic rains. People in the West must urgently change the way they treat the environment because we don’t have another way of living.”
In a new Tearfund report, Dried Up, Drowned Out, which gives a vivid account of poor communities’ experiences of climate change and its effects, Tearfund’s partner organisation in Mali states: “Drought is becoming more frequent – the life of an entire population is on hold, waiting for clouds which promise less and less rain”.
Moreover, with each new flood, drought and cyclone, precious gains in poverty reduction are lost. In the 1990s, disasters caused $35billion per year in direct losses in the developing world, eight times more than in the 1960s. This figure will continue to increase as climate change increases the risk of disasters. After Hurricane Mitch struck his country in 1998, Carlos Flores, Honduran president stated “We lost in 72 hours what we have taken more than 50 years to build.”
Concludes Sarah La Trobe: “In the West, we invest millions of pounds into reducing the risks associated with climate related disasters. However we spend very little on helping poor communities do the same. There are many simple, cost effective measures that save lives such as rainwater harvesting, emergency planning for disasters and planting drought resistant crops. Yet despite the clear moral and economic benefits of these measures, the summit demonstrated a lack of political will to commit to anything of immediate significance to the poor. We hope that the increased level of public awareness of climate change that has been generated by the UK government in 2005 will support Tony’s Blair’s efforts as he assumes presidency of the European Union.”