Fighting climate change - while adapting to it

Reuters AlertNet via IRIN: Environmental scientists are calling on policy-makers to help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change, rather than focus resources on reducing carbon emissions alone. "The effort and money spent on mitigation is enormous compared to adaptation," said Andrew Ash, director of the climate adaptation flagship at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation [http://www.csiro.au/].

"There is a huge lack of awareness about the need for adaptation. Scientists need to get in there and start to influence policy," he said during a three-day climate change adaptation conference [http://www.nccarf.edu.au/conference2010/] on Australia's Gold Coast this week.

Scientists reiterated that marginalized groups contribute the least to climate change but stand to suffer the most. "In India, women are very vulnerable to climate change because they don't have social equality," said Shailendra Kumar Mandal, a professor at the National Institute of Technology Patna [http://www.nitp.ac.in/] in India. "Women often have no land ownership and poor access to health services."

He said India would have one of the largest populations in the world that would have to adapt to climate change, as numbers are predicted to grow by 300 million to 700 million over the next 40 to 50 years. "We expect severe drought in the west of India, and our coastal megacities, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata will have to deal with severe flooding as sea levels rise."

These cities are part of the Asian mega-deltas, the most vulnerable to rising sea levels, along with small islands and Africa. The Asian mega-deltas also include Guangzhou, Shanghai and Ho Chi Minh City, which are also already experiencing more intense tropical cyclones. "We are having trouble communicating these changes to the most vulnerable. We need to give them time to adapt," Mandal said….

The Ganges River delta from space