Eradicating climate poverty a daunting challenge
- Source: Global Times
- [23:00 June 10 2009]
- Comments
Illustration: Liu Rui
By Hu An’gang
Looking at the experience of China’s 30 years of poverty reduction, reducing income poverty is relatively easy, whereas eradicating climate poverty is among the most complex and difficult feats on earth to accomplish.
Currently there is no clear-cut indicator for quantifying the number of victims of climate poverty, not only in China, but also worldwide.
There is still no system in place to measure its scale, geographic distribution or characteristics. Data surrounding the recognition of this form of poverty is highly incongruous and incomplete, leaving us with little substantive information to go on.
In reality, it is one of the trickiest and most widespread forms of poverty.
From China’s perspective, one of its most basic national conditions is its fragile ecological environment. Globally, it is one of the countries most prone to natural disasters.
Frequent abnormal weather hits large tracts of its land; natural disasters and environmental catastrophes are even more common, constantly disrupting economic development and the security of people’s lives and finances.
This has become one of the primary factors restricting future development.
More than 70 percent of Chinese cities and over 50 percent of the population are located in areas susceptible to serious meteorological, seismic or oceanic disasters.
The heavy snowstorms that struck southern China in 2008 alone resulted in direct economic losses of 150 billion yuan ($21, 95 billion), while China’s overall economic losses from natural disasters that year exceeded 1.1 trillion yuan ($160, 98 billion), equal to 3.9 percent of the GDP. This surpassed the clearly stipulated target of 1.5 percent in the Comprehensive National Disaster Reduction Plan of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006 — 10).
Poor areas are extremely susceptible to global climate change.
Take for example the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, which holds a special status in this regard.
The region is highly sensitive to climate change and over the past 50 years has experienced a marked temperature rise, directly affecting the area with an array of meteorological disasters such as powerful winds, snowstorms and hailstorms. The return rate to poverty in the region has also increased during this time.
Indirectly, climate change has caused a regional change to the Asian monsoon, affecting the whole of Asia and the northern hemisphere, and perhaps even exacerbating the problem of the south of China being too wet and the north too dry. Thus, climate change directly impacts people’s basic lifestyle and livelihood.It is clear that the structure of ecosystems in environmentally fragile areas with poor communities are quite unstable and thus susceptible to climate change and extreme weather, and especially to natural disasters such as droughts and floods. The cost of such disasters is high and the impact on the areas enormous.
What kind of public policy should be drafted by central and local governments to eradicate climate poverty?
How can social organizations help the poor escape from poverty? How can poor communities be encouraged to fight their own way out despite the hardships, and improve their adaptability and development capability?
The impact of climate change on poor communities is a new phenomenon, a new challenge in mankind’s fight against poverty in the 21st century.
Our knowledge of it is still limited, our experience insufficient; there is little reliable international experience on which to draw.
The Chinese leadership and people must be bold and forge new models of climate poverty reduction, gathering fresh experience and formulating new knowledge.