Publication
CLIMATE CHANGE: AN ADDITIONAL BURDEN FOR THE MOST VULNERABLE
The impact of climate change is a humanitarian reality that Action Against Hunger teams must face every day. Thus, in addition to the risks of climatic disasters, there are further serious health consequences themselves often linked to an increased pressure on natural resources, including access to clean water. Moreover, climate change is already heavily impacting the food security and livelihoods of a very large number of small producers. It acts as an aggravating factor in areas which are already highly vulnerable and can exacerbate tensions between communities when access to natural resources is a survival matter. Because it represents an additional burden on the most vulnerable populations, addressing climate change is at the very heart of Action Against Hunger’s humanitarian mandate.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is very clear: if an ambitious action plan is not implemented now, it will be difficult if not impossible to maintain the overall surface temperature below the threshold of 2°C of warming (relative to pre-industrial era). Above this threshold, the world will have to face irreversible consequences for all, especially for the most vulnerable populations, women and children in the first place.
With extreme natural events getting increasingly frequent and intense, the populations’ levels of poverty and vulnerability will increase significantly. The most optimistic projections of global warming predict that the undernutrition rate in Africa will increase from 25 to 90% by 2050. If nothing is done to meet the climate challenge, the changes under way will threaten to reverse much of the progress achieved over the past years in the fight against hunger and undernutrition.
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