The first meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol since the treaty’s entry into force earlier this year will be held from November 28 to December 9 in Montreal, Canada. Steve Connor writes about what the world might be like when the climate change begins

Scientists have compiled one of the first comprehensive pictures of what the world might be like when climate change begins to dry up water supplies and teams of specialists have assessed the scale of dangers to human health when a future climate triggers weather extremes such as high temperatures, floods and drought.

The chilling findings—published recently in the journal Nature—come before world leaders meet in Montreal to discuss climate change at the first Conference of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.

Global warming is likely to affect human health by increasing infectious diseases, exacerbating respiratory illnesses, increasing the risk and severity of flooding and reducing the availability of clean drinking water to millions of the poorest people.

The studies also found that the countries most likely to be affected by global warming are those least able to combat its effects. Meanwhile, the nations that contribute most to climate change are those that will suffer the least.

Professor Jonathan Patz of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the lead author of one of the studies, said that it was incumbent on those countries bearing the greatest responsibility for climate change to show moral leadership.

"Those least able to cope and least responsible for the greenhouse gases that cause global warming are most affected. Herein lies an enormous global ethical challenge," Professor Patz said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that changes to the Earth’s climate were already causing about five million extra cases of severe illness a year and more than 150,000 extra deaths.

By 2030, however, the number of climate-related diseases is likely to more than double, with a dramatic increase in heat-related deaths caused by heart failure, respiratory disorders, the spread of infectious diseases and malnutrition from crop failures.

Countries with coastlines along the Indian and Pacific Oceans and sub-Saharan Africa will suffer a disproportionate share of the extra health burden, said Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the WHO, who took part in the latest study.

"Many of the most important diseases in poor countries, such as diarrhoea and malnutrition, are highly sensitive to climate," Dr Campbell-Lendrum said.

"The health sector is already struggling to control these diseases and climate change threatens to undermine these efforts," he said.

Scientists estimate that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are likely to lead to an increase in global average temperatures of between 1.4C and 5.8C by the end of the century.

The number of people at risk of flooding by coastal storm surges is projected to increase from the current 75 million to 200 million by 2080 when sea levels may have risen by about 40 centimetres (16 ins).

A separate study of how rising temperatures will affect water supplies found that severe shortages are likely to affect up to a sixth of the world’s population who currently rely on melting snow and glacial "fossil" ice.

Parts of China and India where vast population centres rely on melting ice from the Himalayas for their supply of drinking water are highly vulnerable to global warming, the study found.

People living west of the Andes are also likely to suffer from a dwindling water supply once the mountain glaciers there have melted completely. Already, Peru has suffered a 25 per cent reduction in water supplies over the past 30 years.

"Climate warming is a certainty in our future and the bottom line in this analysis is that we looked at the impact of the warming and the long-term prognosis is clear and very dire," said Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

"It’s especially clear that regions in Asia and South America are headed for a water supply crisis because once that fossil water is gone, it’s gone," Dr Barnett said.

— By arrangement with The Independent

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