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Floods contaminate drinking water and leave behind stagnant ponds that provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes that spread malaria and other vector-borne diseases. Drought and desertification decimate crops, evaporate scarce water resources, cause food insecurity, and undermine rural livelihoods.
Higher temperatures cause more forest fires which, in turn, devastate natural resources on which communities rely, from firewood to medicinal plants, while releasing additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to further climate change.
Damage to the environment from which the poor derive sustenance only increases their vulnerability and decreases their prospects of escaping poverty.
The international vision
Parents and children take part in a tree-planting
ceremony at the Nadsenterit Primary School in Kenya.
Reforestation activities help protect carbon sinks
and rehabilitate areas affected by
drought and desertification,
while reducing people’s vulnerability to the
adverse impacts of climate change. |
An international vision to manage climate change, promote environmental protection, and support sustainable development has emerged from world conferences organized by the United Nations over recent years.
In 1992, at the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the international community came together to form the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Under the convention, ratified by Canada and more than 100 countries, industrialized nations, as well as countries with economies in transition, committed to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with the global climate system.
In December 1997, Canada and more than 160 other countries signed the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and move to more environmentally responsible ways of producing and using energy. In 2002, Canada ratified the protocol, which came into force on February 16, 2005, when ratified by the 55 countries that produce 55 percent of the developed world's carbon dioxide emissions (at estimated 1990 levels).
In 2000, world leaders issued the Millennium Declaration and agreed on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an ambitious agenda to promote sustainable development to improve peoples’ lives by 2015. Combatting climate change will help ensure environmental sustainability and will contribute to reaching the other MDGs: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and developing a global partnership for development.
The international community renewed its commitment to these goals at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, convened by the United Nations in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2002. The summit reaffirmed sustainable development as a central element of the international agenda and gave new impetus to global action to fight poverty and protect the environment.
Canada is taking action on climate change
In 2000, Canada established a fund dedicated to helping developing countries achieve their commitments as stated in Article 4 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Through the Canada Climate Change Development Fund (CCCDF), Canada helps people in developing countries address climate change in four key ways:
- introducing policies and technologies that will reduce harmful greenhouse emissions
- promoting forestry and agriculture practices that will protect and enhance carbon sinks
- reducing the vulnerability of people in developing countries to climate change and helping them adapt to its negative effects
- raising awareness and helping to develop tools and technologies to combat climate change
The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which administers the CCCDF, also supports a number of multilateral programs, including the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the main funding mechanism to help developing countries with their climate-change-related activities, as well as ongoing programs of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and regional development banks.
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What can you do?
What is climate change?
The earth’s climate has been changing naturally for centuries. In recent years, it has been changing at an unprecedented rate, largely as a result of human activities. Energy use, transportation, industry, global deforestation, and agricultural activities are among the activities that release large amounts of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. The growing concentration of these gases is increasing the earth's natural greenhouse effect and warming the global climate at a very quick pace.
What is the greenhouse effect?
Water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane are referred to as greenhouse gases because they behave much like the glass panes in a greenhouse, trapping energy from the sun. Sunlight enters the Earth's atmosphere, passing through the blanket of greenhouse gases. As it reaches the Earth's surface, land, water, and biosphere absorb the sunlight’s energy. Once absorbed, this energy is sent back into the atmosphere. Some of the energy passes back into space, but much of it remains trapped in the atmosphere by the greenhouse gases, causing our world to heat up. Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth would not be warm enough for humans to live. But as the greenhouse effect becomes stronger, it is making the Earth warmer.
What will happen as a result of climate change?
While it is difficult to predict the effects of a changing climate, experts believe they will include changes in wind and rainfall patterns, shifts in climate and agricultural zones, rising sea levels resulting from glacier melt and thermal expansion of seawater, and increased frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events.
Where is it happening?
Climate change is believed to have already begun altering the global environment in seemingly small but nonetheless profound ways, with significant implications for the health, livelihoods and well-being of people around the world.
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