Hungry for Change on Blog Action Day
Last month I attended Case Camp, a social media “unconference” in Toronto. A meet up of social media professionals who heard talks from internet experts and enthusiasts speaking about the internet today and a bit about tomorrow. I’m bringing this up on Blog Action Day on Climate Change because I had a discussion with Trevor from EarthRangers about this blog and I mentioned that neither Kate or I feel that we are experts on environmental issues and so it hasn’t been a focus in a lot of our blog posts. Trevor reminded me that every development issue is also an environmental issue. This made me think about development and climate change and I realized that he made a good point. Climate change affects a lot of development areas. From food security to human security a worsening climate will affect the poorest of the world just like our economic climate affects those who are often furthest away from the source of the problem.
Drought in sub-saharan Africa has lead to varying degrees of famine, often quite severe. The expectation of the Food and Agricultural Organizaton of the United Nations is that Sub Saharan Africa will be hardest hit by declines in food production by 2050. They say “Agricultural and food production in many developing countries are likely to be adversely affected, especially in countries that have low incomes and a high incidence of hunger and poverty and are already highly vulnerable to drought, flooding and cyclone. In Africa this could lead to an increased dependency in many countries on food imports. It has been estimated that climate change may reduce African potential agricultural output up to the 2080-2100 period by between 15 and 30 percent”FAO.
Beyond the humanitarian crisis’ caused by environmental disasters ie: food scarcity, rising food prices and limited access to food (sometimes exacerbated by conflict) there is also the issue of the cost of climate change policies. When first world countries create policies on climate change like the upcoming Copenhagen Conference will the Third World be represented? Will the needs of all countries be considered by policy or will the Third World again be left out of the game.
Could this also be a chance for innovation from the Third World. Why should the damage shared by all of us rest most severely on the people who already suffer the most? Let’s hope that this day sparks brilliance out there and pushes people to act as well.
