From a social perspective, the impacts of climate change have drastically affected people’s lives and communities; the World Health Organisation estimates that the warming and precipitation trends due to anthropogenic climate change of the past 30 years has already claimed over 150,000 lives annually (Patz et al, 2005). This shows the lethal impact of climate change on people, especially those living in areas which are most vulnerable. Examples of places which could be classed as vulnerable are: Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Niue and other developing regions, which have experienced very significant social impacts from climate change, such as- effects of human health, food supply and their culture/settlements within community’s due to the extreme weather conditions (e.g.- droughts and floods) occurring as a result of climate change. Even a small 2 degrees rise in average temperature can threaten human security worldwide (Cuomo, 2011), jeopardising people’s quality of lives and increasing the deadly effects of climate change. In this essay, I will analyse the case studies named above to show the different social impacts climate change has inflicted onto their local areas and the consequences of this on their livelihoods and increased vulnerability.
Initially, there is growing evidence that the warming trend over recent decades has already contributed to increased morbidity and mortality (Patz et al, 2005). This can be due to vulnerable regions not being able to deal with rising temperatures as they may not have as much access to water (from droughts and lack of accessibility/money to obtain water) and therefore die from dehydration as an example. This shows how humans health is being impacted by the results of climate change; temperature changes have also affected food-borne infections with higher than average temperatures contributing to 30% of cases salmonellosis across Europe (Kovats, R. S. et al. 2004). This could link to how a rising temperature increases the strength of infections as they thrive off warmer environments, leading to people’s health being negatively effected through diseases such as salmonellosis. This is a huge social impact on the vulnerable community as hospitals will have a rise in patients, leading to overcrowding and may not have enough medical staff or supplies to treat the vast number of patients. Therefore, climate change impacts put a major stress onto social infrastructure like hospitals.
Another social impact from the effects of climate change is on culture and identity of place. This is due to climate change increasing extreme weather conditions resulting in a loss of cultural settlements and activities that locals value, for example- from ice caps melting in the artic, this has led to a loss of snow cover and as a result, hunters and fishers have been forced to change their fishing and hunting species/locations, losing traditional knowledge and also cultural identity such as traditional housing (Furgal, C. & Seguin, J, 2006). This has led to a lack of sense of place and cultural identity for communities as they have had to adapt and change to rising temperatures and melting ice caps resulting in losing their original heritage ways. As a result, this raises the idea of mitigation and adaption in response to climate change effecting communities. Adaptation strategies that directly affect attachment to a place may not be supported by locals, and other strategies that allow people to remain in their current place are more likely to be successful (Ellemor, H. & Barnett, J, 2007). This shows how communities whose lifestyle and culture is centre to their location has created a sense of place and is reluctant to leave or change it to adapt to climate change so are hesitant to do anything about it, allowing climate change impacts to take over. An example of the link between culture and climate is on the small Polynesian island of Niue. With a small population of only 1,500 people, climate change poses a social risk to their lives and culture/values. The Heta cyclone in 2004, caused damage to their trees that allowed them to make canoes, an important symbol of Niuean culture and also aids them to catch fish (Adger, N et al, 2012). This could lead to the local people not having enough fish to eat and also to sell, reducing income for locals and reducing their quality of life. The cyclone also destroyed culturally significant buildings, such as the museum and cultural centre with their main artefacts (Ellemor, H. & Barnett, J, 2007). Overall, this lowered the cultural value of the island for the locals and changed their confidence in the island with dealing with climate change.
Furthermore, food crisis’ and insecurity are also becoming a rising concern due to climate change. Climate change could potentially interrupt progress toward a world without hunger (Wheeler & Braun, 2013). This is due to the extreme climate conditions such as droughts and floods eroding the land making it unfertile and therefore unable to grow crops on. A knock-on effect from this could be rising food prices as its harder and takes more time to grow crops so lower income people would not be able to afford as much food, affecting their health and quality of life. Also, it is mainly the poor who suffer the most from famine and hunger (H.G Bohle et al, 1994, pg.38). This quote links to my example before on how supply will decrease from poor climate conditions, leading to rising prices and therefore less demand from people because they can’t afford it, especially the poor. In developing regions mostly, subsistence farmers depend on their own production for both food and income, climate change impacts could end up destroying their job. In Zimbabwe, in the driest areas already in the region, a further increase in temperature to +4 degrees reduces the summer water surplus zones to less than 2% of Zimbabwe and 2 degrees warming would mean yields currently expected 70% of the time would exceed only in less than 40% of the years (H.G Bohle et al, 1994, pg-45). In order to adapt to these climate pressures on food production, resilience’s and mitigation strategies are becoming more developed through “climate smart agriculture” and new technology and knowledge (Wheeler and Braun, 2013, 513). Another example of a vulnerable region suffering from the impacts of climate change is Bangladesh. Commonly identified as a costal and low-lying region, this area is at even more risk from floods, tsunamis and other coastal events. For example, in 2007, cyclone Sidr hit the coast of Bangladesh and caused obliteration to the Sundarbans (a very large mangrove forest). As a result, this led to the destruction of millions of forest-dependent livelihoods and resulted in mass migration of people (Nazmul, Huq et al, 2015). From a social perspective, the destruction of mangrove forests led to people’s homes and land being destroyed, forcing them to migrate as their home and income from land (e.g.- agriculture or cattle use on the land) had been destroyed by the cyclone, potentially leaving the land abandoned and infertile with no use in the future. Also, the loss of mangrove trees could increase the vulnerability of Bangladesh coastline even more as mangroves have strong roots and are designed to withhold strong winds and also stand as a defence from tides to protect other plans and sustain their own lives. Without them homes and the environment are at more risk of flooding. Furthermore, again in 2007, two floods and the cyclone led to 114,000,000 dollars in economic damage and over 1000 killed (Nazmul, Huq et al, 2015); due to Bangladesh, already being a poor region, the mass economic damage would be extremely challenging for them to pay back and ending up in a lot of debt, restricting them for investing in mitigation strategies for these types of climate change impacts and not improving their vulnerability. This overall created mass social impacts due to human casualties, loss of infrastructure and shelter (80% of houses) and loss of the shrimp and agriculture insecurity that many Bangladesh people rely on for income and employment (Nazmul, Huq et al, 2015). Consequently, long term food insecurity and livelihood insecurity occurred for most of the Bangladeshi locals in the area. The loss of the shrimp and agricultural land, doesn’t only mean substantial food is lost for the community but also peoples income would be affected and business/employment leading to a lower quality of life.
To conclude, from a social perspective, I believe the main climate change social impacts are on human health, worsening the food crisis and damaging culture/social place. Overall, due to the climate change accelerating, extreme weather conditions are more likely to occur, worsening the impacts on communities, land and infrastructure. The idea of vulnerability is common across all 3 locations; Zimbabwe, Niue and Bangladesh all present types of vulnerability due to being poorer and smaller regions, from the research its clear to see these areas would likely produce the least amount of greenhouse gases compared to developed regions as they focus more on farming and agriculture and not have the amount of money and knowledge for major factories and polluting cars. (Cuomo,2011) quotes “Climate change was manufactured in a crucible of inequality”. Overall, this highlights the extremity of the social impacts on the vulnerable people in the three named examples and inequality within society (rich and poor) in relation to climate change impacts; how the poor receive more tragedy from climate change than the richer regions as seen from my points in the essay.
Bibliography/Reference list- alphabetical
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