Vulnerability to climate change

From IssuesBriefs

Overview

Recently climate change has emerged as a prominent topic of international discussion. The term ‘climate change’ has emerged in the last decade and is used in reference to the warming of the Earth as a result of a build up of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. A large cause of increase in the build up of greenhouse gases has been a result of the human and particularly industrial activity. This is due to increased amounts of gases such as CO2 (although not exclusively) and the effect has been a reduced the amount of infrared radiation escaping the Earth’s atmosphere causing global warming. The actual effects of this are not yet known for sure however commonly supported arguments include the rising of sea levels due to the melting of glaciers, average lower rainfall and more extreme weather patterns. The impacts of these changes could potentially be huge.

Rising sea levels will displace large populations of islands and coastal areas close to sea level. Similarly, there will be less arable land and lower average rainfalls will negatively affect crop yields. Similarly, drier and drought conditions causes substantially reduced crop yields - potentially reducing the efficiency of current arable land. Severe weather can also damage crops, and reduce supply, thus causing an increase in the price exemplified in March 2006 when Cyclone Larry crossed North Queensland in the area where 90% of Australia’s commercial banana crops are grown which caused highly inflated prices.