Turning Up the Heat on Climate Change

The threat of global warming is too big to let the Copenhagen talks fail. We need to hold our leaders' feet to the fire.

Recently, I found myself on the sidelines of a heated debate on climate change.

This was not a clash between scientists and climate change deniers. It was a group of environmental activists and development workers arguing the merits of the terms “climate change” versus “global warming.” It was a war of words, with both sides desperate to ensure Canadians would understand the peril we face, hoping that the right words would inspire action.

From where I sit, the peril could not be clearer. In my eight years with Canadian Crossroads International (CCI), I have witnessed the impact of drought and floods on Southern communities.

In Swaziland, nearly half the population is reliant on food aid. Seventy per cent of the population is engaged in subsistence farming and food production has been steadily falling for a decade. Erratic weather, soil depletion, and drought are persistent problems, today and for the foreseeable future.

Niger, too, has struggled with food security because of uneven and unpredictable rainfall that has only worsened in recent years. CCI is helping by supporting local partners’ work with subsistence farmers to increase their income and food security through adaptation strategies such as community grain banks. Here, women like Fati Hassan reap the benefits. “Before, it was the women who travelled,” she says. “We travelled a distance of nine kilometres to get food and now it is close by.”

In Niger and Swaziland, as in many poor countries, women are disproportionately affected by poverty and climate change. Globally, women produce up to 90 per cent of the rural poor’s food. They gather it, work and preserve the land, and walk long distances seeking water and other staples. Yet they have little control over natural resources and in many places are barred from owning property.

In recent interviews with Southern partners, each one – no matter what the focus of their work – raised the issue of climate change as a key challenge. Poor communities around the world bear little responsibility for the degradation caused by excessive carbon emissions, but they feel its impact most harshly. Combined with the current food and economic crises, climate change threatens to undo decades of progress in development.

At Crossroads, we’re in the business of poverty reduction. We are working with local partners to increase their resilience and capacity to adapt. We are supporting rural producers. And we are increasing women’s participation in decision-making in their communities and in government. We are not experts in climate change, but we do know that we can all do something to reverse this terrible trend. It is too important to sit on the sidelines.

We can change our own behaviour and consumption here in Canada to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We can support poor countries disproportionately affected with funding for mitigation and adaptation. We can press for women’s increased political representation as well as their access to and control over resources.

Perhaps the most important thing we can do is join with others to raise our voices. As headlines declare that global leaders are abandoning concrete goals for the UN summit in Copenhagen, hope is fading. It’s time to tell our leaders that we expect more from them.

Collaboration across borders to address global problems is hard. We get that. But reaching an agreement that is fair, ambitious, and legally binding is within our grasp. We need our leaders to lead at Copenhagen.