Rich and poor gird for climate change

People around the world are preparing for floods, droughts and other natural disasters in ways largely dictated by wealth and poverty as evidence of climate change mounts, a United Nations report said on Tuesday.

Even if countries immediately took steps to cut greenhouse gases, global temperatures would continue to rise until 2050 due to accumulated carbon emissions, the UN Development Programme said in its report. As a result climate disasters will be more frequent.

“All countries will have to adapt to climate change,” said the report scheduled to be released in Brasilia on Tuesday.
Like many low-lying areas in The Netherlands, the town of Maasbommel is vulnerable to flooding from rising river and sea levels. Despite a sophisticated system of dikes, residents have built 38 homes able to float on water due to their hollow foundations propped up by steel stilts.

In Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, one of the world’s most vulnerable areas to climate change, people also are trying to cope with prospects of increased flooding from storms in the South China Sea during typhoon season.

They are being given life jackets and taught how to swim as part of a programme sponsored by aid groups, the UNDP said.

The contrast between their bamboo stilts and earth dikes with the flood defence systems in Maasbommel illustrates how climate change “reinforces wider global inequalities,” Kevin Watkins, the report’s lead author, told Reuters.

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