Caritas works on helping communities adapt to the effects of climate change, from building cyclone shelters in Bangladesh to early warning systems in West Africa’s drought-prone Sahel region.
There has been success in limiting the deaths from natural disasters in recent decades. While Cyclone Sidr killed around 3,000 people in Bangladesh in 2007, similar or weaker storms killed 100 times that number in 1972 and 45 times more people in 1991, largely because governments and local communities have taken action to reduce risk. Now that is all under threat from climate change.
Almost 250 million people a year are affected by ‘natural’ disasters, the vast majority of them climate-related such as hurricanes, droughts and floods. But the numbers are expected to double by 2015 according to some reports.
Climate change will also increase the threat of new conflicts, which will mean more people displaced, and the need for more humanitarian aid.
Caritas believes it is not enough to just adapt to the effects of climate change – that will just get more and more expensive. Caritas must add its moral weight to the call for measures to stop climate change.