Malnutrition stalks widows and their children
Last week, the 10-day United Nations-led Climate Conference met at Cancun, Mexico, bringing together 25,000 delegates from 194 nations. The Convention creates national strategies for addressing greenhouse gas emissions, including the provision of financial and technological support to developing countries. However, it wrapped up leaving representatives from Central America disappointed with the results. Some leaders were of the opinion that no significant agreement had been reached on important issues such as lowering carbon emissions in the developed world.
President Alvaro Colom was among Central American leaders who emphasized his country’s vulnerability and asked for better conditions for dealing with climate disasters. In his speech at the conference, he exhorted nations “to think of the agreement as saving lives, not reducing emissions, in order to speed agreement.”
Disagreement had arisen over signing a second commitment period on the Protocol. “Without agreement,” Colom continued, “we are burying the dead in every river,” referring to recent floods across Latin America. “Today it is in Colombia and Venezuela, a week ago it was in Costa Rica, two months ago it was in Honduras and in El Salvador, and in May it was in Mexico and Guatemala.”
He said that the whole of human civilization is at risk, not just the 10 most vulnerable nations. The Inter-American Development Bank has identified Guatemala as among the top 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change.
Additionally, Guatemala is the fourth most susceptible nation to natural disasters and suffers the fifth highest incidence of childhood malnutrition in the world, according UNICEF. Perhaps no other country in the world shares Guatemala’s dubious distinction of achieving a top 10 ranking on all three lists.
In a little over 10 years, Guatemala has suffered the wrath of Hurricanes Agatha (2010), Stan (2005), and Mitch (1998), which collectively killed thousands of people and left hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans homeless, in addition to inflicting substantial and widespread damage to the country’s infrastructure and agriculture. Unfortunately, Guatemala has experiences its wettest rainy season in the last 60 years due to continuing tropical storms, such as Alex, that have killed 235 people and left almost 210,000 Guatemalans homeless. Many scientists and others attribute these natural disasters in part to climate change.
Carlos Mancilla, the head of the Climate Change Unit at the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (MARN) of Guatemala, has recently stated that “[c]limate change is exacerbating the conditions of poverty and extreme poverty in the country, and above all is complicating the lives of the most vulnerable.”
Although in recent years Guatemala has suffered significant death and destruction as a result of extreme weather phenomena partially linked to climate change, ironically the country itself contributes an insignificant amount of the total global greenhouse-effect gases that are compromising the planet’s environment. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) determined that all the Central American countries combined contribute less than 0.5 percent of global greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. By comparison, China produces the most total emissions of these gases, followed by the United States.
In his closing remarks at the global climate summit, U.S. ambassador Gerald Feierstein stated, “The United States is delivering on our fast start commitment to help developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. The United States is also working hard to reduce its own emissions and transition to a clean energy economy”.
Perhaps the Guatemalan people can draw hope from his statement?
