Up In Smoke?

Global warming is already happening. The impact of global warming is being felt most by the world’s poorest people, as many of our case studies make clear.

Food production, water supplies, public health, and people’s livelihoods are all being damaged and undermined. Global warming threatens to reverse human progress, making the Millenium Development Goals for poverty reduction unachievable.

To stop it running out of control – for example by global average temperatures rising beyond 2°C above pre-industrial levels – cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised countries in the order of 60 – 80 per cent (relative to 1990 levels) by the middle of this century are essential, far beyond the targets of the Kyoto Protocol.

A truly global solution to stop dangerous climate change is also unavoidable, one that will need to be fair and based on human equality.

As well as new resources needed to mobilise efforts to stop global warming, developing countries need much more money to adapt to the climate change that is already happening, and the warming that is already built into the earth’s climate over the coming decades.

The Working Group on Climate Change and Development are: ActionAid International, Christian Aid, Columban Faith and Justice, IDS (Institute of Development Studies), ITDG (Intermediate Technology Development Group), IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development), Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, nef (new economics foundation), Operation Noah, Oxfam, People & Planet, RSPB, Tearfund, teri Europe, WWF, WaterAid and World Vision.

Up in Smoke? is available in French, Spanish and Portugese:

• SOS Planète: menaces et réponses liées à l’impact du réchauffement planétaire sur le développement humain
• ¿Con el agua hasta el cuello? amenazas y respuestas al impacto del calentamiento global sobre el desarrollo humano
• Virou Fumaça? ameaças do impacto do aquecimento global sobre o desenvolvimento humano e respostas frente a ele