Christian humanitarian and development agency Tearfund has called on the Christian community to pressure the government to take spearhead efforts to tackle the growing impact of climate change on the developing world.
According to the agency, the world’s poorest communities are those suffering the most from the impact of climate change more than western countries.
The impact of changing rainfall patterns and increasingly extreme weather events such as floods and drought are being felt the most severely by some of the most underprivileged communities in the world.
And according to the World Health Organisation, 150,000 people die every year as a direct result of climate change and the vast majority of these are in the developing world.
Tearfund’s Advocacy Director Andy Atkins has responded to the development by writing to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, David Miliband MP, urging him to take urgent action.
The humanitarian agency has called on Christians to join this campaign by writing to Mr Miliband echoing Tearfund’s call for action.
Tearfund is also urging Christians to lobby the government in the run-up to the meeting of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Partners (COP) to take place in Nairobi in November.
Paul Cook, Tearfund’s Head of Policy, said: “Climate change is already damaging the fight against poverty and if urgent action is not taken at the COP in Nairobi, then precious advances will be lost.
“Tearfund has written to David Miliband and I would urge all Christians concerned for their neighbours to do the same.
“The UK government must take a lead in helping poor communities adapt to climate change as well as doing all we can to limit the future devastation that will be unleashed if we don’t rapidly reduce our carbon emissions.”
Tearfund is making three key demands in the lead up to the COP.
•Firstly that the Kyoto Protocol agreement on reducing carbon emissions, which ends in 2012, will be renewed and improved. (The EU has already recognised that the average global temperature increase must be kept below 2C to avoid catastrophic climate change, requiring a greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 50-55 percent. However the EU has recently been advocating reductions of only 15 to 50 percent.)
•Secondly, Tearfund is urging the government to use its influence to help poor communities adapt to climate change. The Least Developed Country Fund and the Special Climate Change Fund need more finance. In addition, a Programme of Work to help countries adapt to climate change must get more funding.
•Finally, Tearfund is lobbying for adaptation to climate change to be central to all future development work.