Influence of Climate Change on Global, National and Local Scale

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Introduction:

Climate change nowadays gets addressed more often, this is due to people recognizing the threat they are putting themselves in as a result of ignoring it. Over time, our planet has considerably grown warmer creating pressing issues for our society. There have been increased greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide trapping heat, making our planet warmer slowly. These gases are emitted from our cars, industrial factories, agricultural activities and even deforestation which contributes largely towards the CO2 emissions. Climate change causes harmful ocean heating, snow melting, heat waves, and storms. Rural areas get severely damaged due to it, many people often migrate to urban areas. Rural areas suffer from problems like inconsistent crop growth, a threat towards animals, extreme weathers conditions, and are limited to resources. Areas that are near the coast are also in danger due to the sea level’s rising, this increases the chances of floods which negatively impacts the farms, forests, houses. I hope to learn the impacts of climate change on rural areas, how people are implementing their solutions and to see the different adaptions of the rural communities.

Main body:

• Local:

India is still a developing country. India’s rapid population growth and the poor economy leaves rural communities defenseless against the threat of climate change. With them being extremely and having poor farming practices and they are in desperate need of support. The local rural areas are unprotected because the severity of this issue has not been established yet. The main Indian states that are affected are Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and other states that heavily depend on agriculture.

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Tamil Nadu claims 4% of India’s land and 6% of its population, and agriculture contributes 6% of India’s GDP. Climate change is particularly threatening since 60% of Tamil Nadu’s employment is for agriculture which seriously impacts the local communities. Monsoon rains occur in summer months, farmers heavily rely on these rains for additional crop growth. Over the last decade, climate change has caused droughts which decreased the monsoons rains significantly. In the years 2012-2013, the decrease in cereals productivity was 50% and pulses 70%, the lack of rain all damaged the crop productivity severely. In 2016, the northeast monsoon had decreased by 62%, the monsoon rains only reached 168 mm failing to reach the expected 440 mm. In the years 2016-2017, Tamil Nadu failed to reach its intended 1,450,000 hectares of rice but only achieved 750,000 hectares. The drought was so serious that the state needed the support of USD 5.8 billion. The temperature expected to increase in the next 60 years can even go up to 3.1 Celsius which will significantly decrease the rainfall in northeast and southeast monsoon. The alarming floods and droughts have a dangerous impact on people, there have even been increased death rates due to the droughts caused by climate change. The sea level rising in coastal Tamil Nadu has a projected to be from 7.12 cm to 36.98 cm in the next 100 to 125 years. There have been some international organizations that are conducting projects to help the locals adapt, but there’s very little they can do with low finance.

National:

Climate change has massive impacts on US rural communities. Although the US is very urbanized these days, still many Americans live in rural areas. Over 60 million people still live in rural lands, which is 19.3% of the US population. The US is less industrialized then we think it is, about 97% of the land belongs to the rural areas this indicates how much damage the change of climate can afflict these parts negatively. There’re various threats it already has displayed in the recent years like impacting the agricultural activities, harming wildlife, causing accidents like wildfires, and even the forced displacement of the rural communities by destructing their homes this also causes rural-to-urban migration.

The climate gap in the rural areas of the US is very high. People in the climate gap are people very endangered to this issue, this is due to them enduring poverty and less are developed to adapt and take the proper precautions. Climate change is very threatening to the people in the climate gap since they’re very dependent on agricultural activities, about 2% of the US population are employed to agriculture. According to the USGAO, climate change can increase floods and erosion by up to 86%. It also has serious effects on humans, like the cause of diseases from heat waves or harming them from floods and wildfires. Over 129 million trees have been destroyed due to droughts, and there have been other reports that suggest warm temperatures attract beetles which is another reason for the killing of trees. There have also been wildfires such as the Carr wildfire, in northern California.

Migration is another serious issue that climate change creates, people are forced to leave rural areas because the increased temperature seriously impacts crop production. The negative crop output causes unemployment which eventually leads to migration. However, people in rural communities might also want to migrate due to the hot weather, this could be caused by the lack of rain in the area. Although the people get affected by climate change, they are still a massive contributor for releasing these dangerous gases such as carbon, over 6% of the harmful gases in the US is released by agricultural activities. Overall in some rare instances, the result of climate change has shown some minor benefits like increased crop growth, but the disadvantages and the harm significantly outweigh the risks.

• Global

Climate change has already begun to show its impacts globally, and this is only going to get worse in time. Soon, Africa will be suffering from problems like water and food shortages, with the continent having major poverty issues fighting against the threats is not going to be an easy task. In the next 30 years, it is estimated that between 300 to 600 million will have to face water shortages. People in Africa already battle with diseases or malnutrition, since they are not getting the proper knowledge, necessary resources, and proper practices to adapt it only makes their situation even more threatening.

Regions like Europe and Asia face the same issues such as low crop production from agriculture, dangerous diseases making people sick, increased droughts. The rate of natural disasters has multiplied significantly, floods and wildfires have grown to be more frequent. In 2016 over 200 million people had been damaged by these disasters.

Countries like China and the US are a major contributor to the GHG that is being emitted, and India’s emissions are estimated to have major growth. In 2013, the global carbon emissions were 9.735 gigatonnes from fossil fuels. In 2016, CO2 made up for 81% of the GHG.

Climate also hugely affects the wildlife and even can be a process for extinction for some animals, tiger’s population is already limited and they’re under threat from the sea levels rising. The lack of water from droughts and floods puts African Elephants in danger.

The IPCC has many scientists from many countries globally working on it, has projected that in the next 100 years there will be a minimum temperature change of 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, within the next 70 years, it is estimated that the sea levels can rise to 4 feet this is due to the oceans warming.

There are many non-profitable organisations such as ‘’Climate Reality Project’’ and ‘’Climate Solutions’’. There are also organisations that educate people, like ‘’ACE’ ’or ”CAMEL’’ and others that help the wildlife such as ‘’EDF’’ and ‘’NWF’’.

Issues and Solutions:

The main cause for the threats that are arising is due to fossil fuels, they’re currently the most consumed energy. They emit the most harmful gases like CO2, NH4, N2O and they’re also the primary reason why climate change occurs. Countries like the US and China use the most of it. In 2015, China used up 50% of the global coal use, this also shows how much a country/region relies on these fuels. A solution to this issue can be investing on renewable sources as most them have very little impacts, although governments know the damages caused by fossil fuels, they are still inclined towards them because of the initial investments for renewables are very high. However, recently many countries have taken the initiative to work on different energy sources. Another reason why now countries are switching to different sources is that these fuels are close to being fully exhausted. A great alternative can be solar, geothermal or wind energy. Although renewable sources may have some disadvantages, they are better for the long term and also less impactful.

Another major issue is for people who live in the rural areas, this comes with the task of adapting and using new strategies to survive which becomes more challenging when there are disasters caused and having to deal with poverty. Many people don’t know how to tackle this because they lack the knowledge and are less developed, the majority of the people often don’t even realize the danger they’re in. Nowadays, people have found ways to adapt in farming such as different crop rotations, avoiding pesticides, irrigate, and also trying to methods of farming. There are also policies that are implemented for example EU, that encourages farmers to aim and promote climate-friendly activities, they even give insurance. There are also many projects in the EU that are done to educate people, such as ‘’JRC’’ and ‘’Animal Change’’. Other solutions that can help are better research done with farming aspects and governments investing more towards helping people.

Opinions and Conclusion:

I think that people need to make a change immediately to adapt and prevent issues. So far it seems to me that people haven’t taken this seriously, and there are constantly new problems that are arising and yet out we have not shown necessary progress to avoid them. My view is that governments should increase their investments on other energy sources to decrease the use of harmful fuels. However, I would say that there have been many organizations that implement different strategies which help the rural communities. From my research I gather that people don’t know the harm that’s being done to them, so I think there needs to different ways to educate people like raise more awareness in the areas. I believe there should be more support from the government like if a natural disaster occurs they should fund the people money since rural communities are generally poor and are unable to recover from them.

To conclude, through my research I found that rural areas get damaged the most, people get impacted in numerous ways such as diseases, destruction of houses and crops. In my local research found that this is particularly a threat for people in these areas because they highly depend on agriculture for their jobs. Furthermore, I found the reasons how crop growth can be stunted, like decreased monsoon rains which affect crop productivity. I found in my national research how effects have caused increased floods, droughts. Finally, for global, I found out how people globally suffer through malnutrition and soon face the challenge of water shortages. On the whole, rural communities have the toughest obstacle to overcome since they face climate change like everyone else, but their poverty and lack of knowledge makes their situation the most frightening.

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