VOA News: The United Nations says reducing risks from weather-related disasters such as floods and droughts can help nations adapt to climate change. The United Nations is urging greater action to reduce climate-related risk and vulnerabilities through measures such as early warning. Scientists predict global warming will lead to more intense and frequent extreme weather events, including storms, high rainfalls, floods, droughts and heat waves.They say the poorest countries and poor people in wealthy countries will suffer first and most, because they have few means to adapt to increasing disasters brought on by climate change. Margareta Wahlstrom is Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction. She says nations will make a serious error if they do not take urgent action.
"The disasters are there. There are more of them. More people are affected," Wahlstrom said. "It is costing more money. It is having longer term effects on poverty and on peoples' ability to generate even minimal wealth for improving their lives." In any given year, Wahlstrom says, at least 70 percent of natural disasters are created by climate and weather. For example, she says too much water, which results in severe flooding or too little water, which causes drought, spell disaster for millions of people worldwide.
She notes one billion people live under the poverty line. She says studies show an increase of temperature of plus two degrees could plunge another 400 million into poverty within the next 20 or 30 years. "If nothing is done about global warming, the agricultural output in many countries would drop ... It could drop by 25 percent in some of the main wheat-growing and rice-growing countries today ... That would have a huge impact on livelihood, nutrition and food security issues," Wahlstrom said….
A 1993 flood in Shenzhen, China, shot by Thisisivor, who has generously released it into the public domain via Wikimedia Commons
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