In 2008 the theme of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII[1]) was ‘Climate Change, Bio-cultural Diversity and Livelihoods: the stewardship role of indigenous peoples and new challenges’. Although climate change and the related issue of bio-cultural diversity have…
Water is undoubtedly at the heart of the climate change debate. The principal associated effects are all water-related: sea temperature and sea level rise, increased frequency and intensity of precipitation and flooding, more severe heat-waves and droughts, and increased intensity…
Discussion of the potential for environmental change to drive migration has often assumed migration to be an inevitable outcome of adverse environmental change. While this may be true in the case of permanent inundation due to a rise in sea…
In Alaska, climate change is evident.Temperatures across the state have increased by between 2 and 3.5 degrees Celsius since 1974, arctic sea ice is decreasing in extent and thickness, wildfires are increasing in size and extent, and permafrost is thawing.…
Among the obvious diseases that will plague health planners, health care workers and policymakers in an era of climate change related migration, some of the most likely diseases are mosquito-borne. Malaria and dengue have always moved with people, and in…
In the past 100 years, Kenya recorded 28 major droughts, four of which occurred in the last ten years. These droughts have had a devastating impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. For the three million pastoralists of northern Kenya, climate…
Poor countries are disproportionately affected by natural hazards, owing to their intrinsically greater vulnerability to hazards and comparatively low capacities for risk reduction measures, while richer countries tend to sustain large economic costs. Over the period 1991-2005, developing and least…
Nigeria is experiencing increasing incidence of disease, declining agricultural productivity, increasing number of heatwaves, unreliable or erratic weather patterns, flooding, declining rainfall in already desert-prone areas in the north causing increasing desertification, decreasing food production in central regions, and destruction…
The European Court of Human Rights recently clarified these obligations when it had to address the question as to whether and when deaths caused by a man-made or natural disaster can amount to a human rights violation by the state,…
It is now clear that humanitarian preparedness and response to extreme weather events and other changes are a small but extremely important emerging component of the climate change adaptation debate. Two trends are of particular humanitarian concern. First, climate change…