[prakruti] Poor Children Main Victims of Climate Change

[Guest guest]

At 09:02 PM 4/29/08, you wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

 

Children are the Vctims of the waste and pollution that adults

cause.

Poor children again.

Best wishes.

 

Kisan

Mehta

Priya Salvi

Save Bombay Committee and Prakrut

1203, Kanchanjung " A " Wing,

Plot 20, Sector 11, Koparkhairne,

Navi Mumbai 400709

Website:

www.savebombaycommittee.org

Kisan Mehta 00 91 9223448857

Priya Salvi 00 91

9324027494

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Poor Children Main Victims Of Climate Change - UN

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=48170

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poor Children Main Victims Of Climate

Change - UN

UK: April 30, 2008

 

LONDON - Millions of the world's poorest children are

among the principal victims of climate change caused by the rich

developed world, a United Nations report said on Tuesday, calling for

urgent action.

 

The UNICEF report " Our Climate, Our Children, Our

Responsibility " measured action on targets set in the UN Millennium

Development Goals, aimed at halving child poverty by 2015. It found

failure on counts from health to survival, education and gender equality.

 

" It is clear that a failure to address climate change is a failure

to protect children, " said UNICEF UK director David Bull.

" Those who have contributed least to climate change -- the world's

poorest children -- are suffering the most. "

The report said climate change could add 40,000-160,000 child deaths a

year in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa through lower economic growth.

 

It also noted that if temperatures rose by two degrees Celsius above

pre-industrial levels, up to 200 million people globally would face

hunger -- a figure that climbs to 550 million with a temperature rise of

three degrees.

The UNICEF report said economic damage due to climate change would force

parents to withdraw children from schools -- often the only place they

are guaranteed at least one meal a day -- to fetch water and fuel

instead.

Environmental changes wrought by climate change will also expand the

range of deadly diseases such as malaria, which already kills 800,000

children a year and is now being seen in previously unaffected areas.

 

Scientists predict global average temperatures will rise by between 1.6

and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to carbon emissions from burning

fossil fuels for power and transport, causing floods, famines, violent

storms and droughts.

An international agreement is being sought on action to ensure

temperatures do not rise more than 2.0 degrees.

 

INEVITABLE

But some environmentalists say a 2.0 degree rise is inevitable whatever

action is taken now. That is partly because of the 30-year time lag in

climate response to emitted carbon, and partly because nations like

China, which opens a new coal-fired power station a week, cannot and will

not stop burning carbon.

China, with vast coal reserves and an economy growing at 10 percent a

year, is set to overtake the United States as the world's biggest carbon

emitter.

Developing nations, under pressure to sign up to new curbs on carbon

emissions at the end of next year, say there is no reason they should

keep their people in poverty when the problem has been caused by the

developed world.

" Rich countries' responsibility for the bulk of past emissions

demands that we give our strong support, " said Nicholas Stern, whose

2006 report on the economic implications of the climate crisis sparked

international concern.

" Business-as-usual or delayed action would lead to the probability

of much higher temperature increases which would catastrophically

transform our planet, " he wrote in a foreword to Tuesday's report.

 

" It will be the young and the poor and developing countries that

will suffer earliest and hardest.

" We cannot allow this to happen. "

(Editing by Kate Kelland and Catherine Evans)

 

Story by Jeremy Lovell

==============================

copyright © Planet Ark 2008

All headlines are copyright © Reuters 2008

===========================================================

 

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