Exporting the ecological effects of climate change

Abstract

Global anthropogenic climate change is contributing to the considerable economic imbalance between rich and poor nations. The changing climate will inevitably influence natural resources, but it is the poorest countries—where humans rely most directly on natural systems for their livelihoods—that are expected to experience the greatest changes. Accordingly, the resources, economies and societies of these nations are likely to be most severely affected, despite the fact that they are least able to cope with—and are least responsible for—climate change itself. Here, we analyse which countries and regions will suffer the most severe changes to their natural ecosystems and biodiversity, and how the responsibility for those changes is distributed across the world. > The changing climate will inevitably influence natural resources, but it is the poorest countries […] that are expected to experience the greatest changes On a broad scale, geographic variations in temperature, rainfall and seasonality determine ecosystem productivity and species diversity. Ecosystems therefore respond to changes in temperature and precipitation, which inevitably have an impact on biodiversity. Recent shifts in the distributions of various species towards the poles and to higher altitudes (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003; Root et al , 2003; Walther et al , 2005; Wilson et al , 2005; Franco et al , 2006; Hickling et al , 2006), and the extinction of more than 1% of all amphibian species (Pounds et al , 2006), indicate that climate change is already having a major impact on biodiversity. Climatic changes are also expected to alter the distributions of most types of vegetation (Cramer et al , 2001; Scholtze et al , 2006) and there is already evidence of a shift from deciduous woodland to evergreen forest in part of southern Europe (Walther et al , 2002). Such changes will have implications both for biodiversity (Malcolm et al , 2006) and for the humans …