Natural Disasters & Climate Change

News of floods, droughts and other natural disasters seem to arrive more frequently at our doorstep. But does this really mean that the number of humanitarian catastrophes has risen? And if so why? Over the past years, we have received an unprecedented number of requests for humanitarian aid from our partners and others; so at World Accord, we found ourselves asking these very questions.

The better coverage social media and 24-hour news sources provide help explain why we seem to hear about disasters more frequently. But this is only part of the story. Experts tell us that there are more hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts and other weather-related natural disasters today than over the last several decades. Once we knew this, it didn’t take much additional looking to learn why this is so: Scientists have also been warning us for some time that more erratic, severe weather events are connected to human-created climate change.

So Who’s Responsible?

A carbon footprint is the estimate of how many tonnes of carbon a typical person puts into the air in a year. It measures the pollution created by all our activities, including driving a car, heating a home, and buying goods manufactured in a distant corner of the world. In other words, most things related to maintaining our material standard of living. By this generally accepted measure, a typical Canadian puts almost 20 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. This is 25% more than someone living in Britain, and over 600% times more than a citizen of China or Bolivia, but still less than the typical American, who puts almost 29 tonnes of carbon into the air. You can calculate your own carbon footprint here.

So despite the rapid growth of countries like India and China, it is wealthy countries, like ours, that as a whole still pollute the most. Countries already rich and industrialized are also responsible for most of the carbon that is already up in the atmosphere.

Stay tuned. In future blogs, we will continue to explore why climate change is affecting poor and developing countries disproportionately, how climate change affects the communities where we support development work, and what they are already doing to adapt. We will also try to disentangle some of the issues shaping international debates around climate change. Most importantly, we want to start a discussion about how we can begin to respond.