Climate Change, Vanishing Ecosystems and the Challenge of Achieving Human Prosperity

Abstract

Poverty is intricately woven with ecosystem and biodiversity losses. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2012) has effectively emphasised that the achievement of several Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from Goal 1 of reducing extreme poverty and hunger to the improvement of maternal health (Goal 5), reduction of child mortality (Goal 4) and economic development (Goal 8) face severe challenges due to the deterioration of biodiversity and ecosystem losses. While urban inhabitants may also not be able to escape CC related impacts upon the economy, the 1.2 billion rural people living in abject poverty may suffer irretrievable damage to their lives. Most of the ecosystems which provide food, fuel, shelter, medicines, clean drinking water, grazing for livestock, a variety of crops and disaster mitigation may suffer extinction due to CC. Climate-change-related temperature variability has reduced resource availability due to a loss of capacity of ecosystems to function to their optimum, and an increase in intensity and frequency of droughts, desertification, species depletion, soil degradation and crop failures has reduced livelihood options and the vulnerability of human beings. Studies indicate that the world has already exceeded the desired limit of 2 °C, which was accepted at the Cancun Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (UNDP, 2012).