By IANS
Manesar (Haryana) : The world is looking at a reversal in human development for the first time in the last 50 years, perhaps in the last 100, thanks to global warming, Kevin Watkins, lead author of the 2007 human development report (HDR) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said here Monday.
“By and large, the last 50 years have been a success story in human development across the world, when you look at key indicators such as literacy or poverty reduction. We may see that process coming to an end. First, there will be a stall, then a reversal,” Watkins said at a workshop here for journalists from 12 Asian countries organised by UNDP.
“We have become conditioned to think that the future will be better than the present. That basic prospect is about to be turned on its head,” said Watkins, three weeks before this year’s HDR is due to be released.
All this is due to climate change from global warming, which also carries potentially catastrophic ecological risks in the long term, Watkins pointed out.
The annual HDR of the UNDP – now in its 17th year – has become the benchmark for the state of the world in many respects. Watkins has been its lead author since 2005. He thinks this year’s HDR theme – climate change and its effect on human development – is the most important taken up by the UNDP so far, “because climate change will narrow the choices of people, their rights to food, health or livelihood”.
How will climate change affect the average farmer, fisherman or slum dweller in Asia, Africa or Latin America? “There will be a small and gradual increase in the risks of everyday life,” Watkins said. “There will be more droughts, the monsoon will be late, there will be sudden downpours, storms will get stronger.”
“The effect of any of these on poor people is far worse than on others, because the poor are not in a position to manage added risks. When there is a drought, they sell their seeds and livestock, they withdraw their children from school, the whole family starts skipping meals. The adverse effects stay throughout their lives. Despite India’s well-developed disaster response mechanism, the effect of the 2002 drought in Andhra Pradesh is still being felt.
“When a flood or a mudslide wipes out a city slum, those houses are not insured. Those people have nowhere to go. All these increase inequities in society. And all these are due to climate change,” Watkins held.
HDR 2007 is going to explain how climate change holds people in “low human development traps – cycles of disadvantage from which they cannot escape,” Watkins said.
When it comes to strategies that will help people adapt to climate change, “it is the purest example of double standards in the world”, according to Watkins. “Britain spends $1.2 billion a year on flood defence. It is so proud of the new Thames dike that goes higher and higher. The Netherlands or the New York City also spend millions so that the can cope with the rise in sea levels that accompany global warming.
“But four multilateral funds for adaptation to climate change in the entire developing world have raised a total of $50 million so far.”
Watkins warned: “Unless the world can tackle inequalities in adaptation, it will become one of the biggest causes of inequity and poverty in the 21st century. The only way out of this is to mainstream adaptation policies in the development strategy of every country, because climate change is here to stay.”