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WWF Climate Blog

Home » Blogs » Lynn Englum's blog

When poverty meets natural disaster & what that means with a changing climate

Published by Lynn Englum on Sun, 02/14/2010 - 16:41
As the reality of climate change impacts becomes increasingly clear, the global community will witness these impacts falling disproportionately on impoverished states. Much of the domestic dialogue surrounding climate change and legislation fails to address this aspect. A recent piece (The Natural Disaster Response Divide) published in The Huffington Post (9 Feb. 2010) discusses the vulnerability of poor developing countries to natural disasters and its implication for a world expecting more severe weather from climate change.
 
The piece highlights the stark risk differential of climate related disasters between developed and developing countries, while examining Haiti’s inability to cope with its own natural disaster due to poverty and inadequate infrastructure. The article points out that even though earthquakes and climate change are unrelated natural disasters, “the aftermath and scale are often indistinguishable.”

A U.S. Navy sailor and an Israeli soldier carry a Haitian girl to a waiting helicopter near Port-au-Prince, Haiti (25 Jan 2010): source Dept. of Defense

It’s important to recognize the resources and money the U.S. poured into helping Haiti respond to the earthquake; and many more will go toward reconstruction. As the developing world begins to feel the effects of a changing climate, more U.S. resources will be required to help impoverished countries prepare and cope. Limiting climate pollution and preventing the worst impacts of climate change will diminish these costs.
 
 
Excerpt:
The horrifying aftermath from Haiti's earthquake is a stark example of the vulnerability of poor nations to sudden shifts in their natural environment. For this reason, developing countries lacking infrastructure and adequate response mechanisms are defenseless against the growing threats of a changing climate…
 
Since the earthquake, money and aid have flowed into Haiti. Through day and night news coverage, Americans have witnessed the tragedy and despair that result from combining poverty and natural disaster… Unfortunately the scene playing out in Haiti is the awful reality of many poor developing countries. The fact is, poverty stricken states lack the ability to respond to natural disasters… If climate pollution continues to rise, they [developing countries] will bear the harshest cost of a changing environment, and the current images from Haiti may become a frequent and familiar scene of the world's poor.
 
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