Climate Change
When many people hear the word climate Change’, you may recall a picture of a polar bear standing in a desolate state in the Arctic Ocean where the glaciers are melting away. However, climate change is not just a problem with one poor polar bear in the picture. It is a global problem and a local one.
More frequent extreme weather:
Globally, climate change increases the risk of floods, droughts, hurricanes, and other weather events. While these weather conditions affect everyone, the biggest victim is poor in developing countries. Poor populations in developing countries often live in areas at high risk of extreme climate disasters. They do not have a sturdy home that will protect them from rain, wind, and cold.
Emergency food security:
Climate change will have a serious impact on food security. Some regions will benefit from increased agricultural productivity, while others will experience reduced productivity depending on geographic location. Along with these changes, natural disasters will become more intense, pests, and diseases that harm crops and livestock will rise more frequently and threaten crop yields.
Climate change can lead to reduced crop yields and livestock losses and has a fatal effect on regional food security. Climate change affects not only the purchasing power of each family, the food market, and food security, but also human health and livelihoods.
Reducing the quantity and quality of water resources:
For human health, it is necessary to ensure sufficient drinking water. Rivers and lakes provide drinking water for people and animals and are an integral part of agriculture and industry. Globally, climate change will have an unpredictable and major impact on freshwater systems. There will be more floods and droughts, conflicts and friction over water resources, and community migrations. The lack of fresh water will also affect agriculture, food security, and income.
Climate change also threatens the world’s oceans, which provide food for billions of people. The ocean absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide and prevents it from rising into the upper atmosphere of the atmosphere, acting as a carbon sink’ that slows global warming. Rising water temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations above normal levels lead to acidification of the ocean and threaten the balance of the ecosystem, which is kept breathtakingly as a place where much marine life can live. When the balance of marine ecosystems is broken and marine life disappears, humans relying on the sea will also be affected.
Increased epidemic:
Climate change may change the distribution of certain diseases. This is because carriers carrying the disease are sensitive to temperature, humidity, and precipitation and spread the disease to new areas. Examples include malaria, dengue fever, mosquitoes that spread yellow fever, sand flies that carry leishmaniasis, and ticks that carry Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis.
Increased refugees:
Severe natural disasters and water and food crises lead to large-scale population movements, increasing population density in certain areas, and increasing the risk of epidemic outbreaks due to population concentration.
Desertification:
Forests mitigate climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide, a major cause of climate change. Forests play an essential role in our survival. The forest purifies air and water, conserves soil, supplies food, wood, and medicine, and is also home to many endangered wildlife. A population of 1.6 billion is now dependent on forests for a living.
Forests are disappearing at an alarming rate with felling and burning for agriculture and livestock. CO2 emissions from desertification and the replacement of former forest areas with agricultural land account for 20% of global emissions.
Rather than conserving forests that can solve the climate crisis, we are exacerbating the climate problem by destroying it.
As such, climate change is a serious threat to life on Earth, including humans, by adversely affecting disasters, health, habitats, food, water resources, forests, and desertification. It is essential to mitigate and adapt to climate change that directly affects our lives.
