Climate change: water shortages biggest threat to developing countries

Updated - Friday 03 November 2006

In the wake of the November 2006 UN climate summit [1], Tearfund has published a report [1] warning that climate change threatens water supplies for millions of people in poorer countries. One of Britain's leading climate scientists, Sir John Houghton, who contributed a foreword to the report, said water shortages would be the biggest climate threat to developing countries. “Extreme droughts currently cover about 2% of the world's land area, and that is going to spread to about 10% by 2050", Houghton told the BBC.

Citing research by the Oxford academic Norman Myers, Tearfund suggests there will be as many as 200 million climate refugees by 2050. Areas where people are already on the move to avoid climate excesses include the northeast region of Brazil; China, where three provinces are seeing the spread of the Gobi desert; and Nigeria, where about 2,000 sq km is becoming desert each year.

The Tearfund report list several simple measures that communities have developed themselves to deal with the effects of unpredictable climate. These include rainwater harvesting, contour bunding, check dams and planting drought-resistant crops. Tearfund urges that these traditional methods be mainstreamed in Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) plans.

[1] UNFCC - United Nations Climate Change Conference - Nairobi, Kenya, 6-17 November 2006

[2] Boyd, S. and Roach, R. (2006). Feeling the heat. Teddington, UK, Tearfund. PDF file [196 KB]

Related news: Africa: climate change will seriously affect surface water supply, predict researchers, Source Weekly, 16 Mar 2006 ; Water wars: climate change a threat to global security, British Defense Secretary, Source Weekly, 16 Mar 2006

Related web site: Co-operative Programme on water and climate

Contact: Rachel Roach, Policy Officer, Tearfund, UK, Rachel.Roach@tearfund.org

Source: Richard Black , BBC, 20 Oct 2006 ; Tearfund, 20 Oct 2006