The World Health Organisation claims that climate change is responsible for all manner of health threats – from malaria to storms– and is calling for global caps on emissions. But experts contradict these claims:

• The geographical incidence of malaria has very little to do with climate, and is more related to economic, ecological and political factors. Malaria existed in Siberia as recently as the late 19^th century and was present throughout Europe for most of history. Economic development and changing land use led to its eradication from the continent.[i]
• Deaths from climate related natural disasters have fallen dramatically since the 1920s, as a result of economic growth and technological development. With continued economic growth, the death rate is likely to continue to fall regardless of climate change.[ii]
• Overall human mortality from heatwaves caused by global warming is not likely to increase. In fact, cold weather causes far more deaths than hot weather. The effects of warmer temperatures are generally beneficial in the medium term and for most of the world[iii]

Global emissions caps would harm the poor by retarding economic growth and technological development. As the majority of the disease burden in developing countries is caused by poverty – particularly by the effects of poor sanitation and indoor air pollution – the WHO is undermining the very process that will make the biggest improvement to global health.

Neither is giving aid in return for emissions caps the solution. Studies show that aid-financed public health spending is particularly ineffectual – it is estimated that the average child death could be averted for as little as $10, but the average amount spent to achieve this in the health systems of developing countries is $50,000 to $100,000.

Philip Stevens, director of the Campaign for Fighting Diseases said:

‘If the WHO is serious about improving the health of the poor, it should stop trying to push emissions caps and focus on the real barriers to good health, such as taxes on medicines.  For example, the Indonesian government increases the manufacturer’s price of certain drugs by ten times.  Why does the WHO not advocate against these taxes on the sick, instead of promoting global poverty via carbon caps?’

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[i] “Could global warming bring mosquito-borne disease to Europe?” Prof Paul Reiter in Environment & Health (2004)

[ii] “Death and death rates due to extreme weather events,” Dr Indur Goklany in the Civil Society Report on Climate Change (2007)

[iii] “Illness and mortality from heat and cold: will global warming matter?” Prof William Keatinge in Environment & Health (2004)

Some development organisations, journalists and government officials celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol with a giant birthday cake. Spirits were high as many seemed content with the progress made since COP-12, and the potential for a post-2012 treaty.

But though the cake may have been sweet for COP-13 attendants, life will remain bitter for the majority of the worlds poor who are set to lose heavily from a post-2012 deal.

As Barun Mitra of Indias Liberty Institute, one of the 42 members of the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, explains:

The problem facing hundreds of millions of poor people throughout the world is not that they consume too much, but that they hardly have any reliable and efficient sources of energy, clean water or a secure supply of food. All of these will be jeopardized in a world that is made much poorer through a post-2012 agreement which essentially inhibits economic growth.

To expect or ask that the poor sacrifice today for the sake of the rich tomorrow is not only immoral, but it also ignores the plight of poverty faced by millions today.

Though activists claim to be acting on behalf of the poor, the measures they propose would only cause harm. Instead of such hyperbole, we need to consider why countries like India have created abundance from scarcity and have adapted to changing circumstances. After the major famine of 1965-66 which killed 1.5 million people, India was considered a basket case. Today, India is poised to become a net food exporter. The improvement in Indias agriculture was due to a number of factors, including:

• access to new technologies such as hybrid seeds, agro-chemicals, and irrigation
• relatively greater market access
• secure land tenure
• vibrant democracy

The situation is no different globally. Worldwide, in the past 50 years, agricultural yields have improved year on year. Fundamentally, this demonstrates that activists utterly fail to understand that given the chance, people are able to raise themselves out of poverty.

If governments really care about the present and future of the worlds 800 million undernourished people, they would take the costless and effective steps of removing trade and regulatory barriers that only serve to make food and associated technologies far more costly. Tragically for their poorest citizens, Sub-Saharan African countries worry about the impact of climate change – but continue to apply an average import tariff of 33.6% on agricultural imports.

The cake and policies wheeled out in Bali will hardly help the hungry or the poor. The way forwards is home-grown adaptation through technology and trade, which will allow people to raise themselves out of poverty.

In a new report*, Professors Douglas Southgate and Brent Sohngen, both of

Ohio State University, analyse the likely impacts of climate change on

agriculture and forestry. They argue that these two sectors can adapt to

global warming, provided that food, timber, inputs, and resources are

exchanged in free markets.  But if governments interfere with market

forces, adaptation will be impeded and commodity supplies will suffer in

response to climate change.

“With the prospect of higher temperatures and less precipitation in some

geographical locations because of global warming, governments must refrain

from regulating or otherwise meddling with prices and commerce. This means

eliminating agricultural protectionism, subsidies to water users (and

others), and regulations which inhibit the use of technology,” said

Professor Douglas Southgate.

“Successful adaptation to global warming is most likely to happen where

goods, services, inputs, and resources are allocated in markets that are

free and competitive. This means unencumbered agricultural trade at the

international level,” added Southgate.

In the context of growing water scarcity worldwide, Southgate and Sohngen

argue that political mismanagement of water resources must be addressed as

a matter of urgency. “Already excessive, the waste and misallocation

created when water is supplied too cheaply to farmers will grow worse as

the planet warms,” they say.

The authors say that water must be subject to market forces rather than

the misallocation currently created by governments:

“Efficient pricing of water – which occurs if that resource is bought and

sold freely as opposed to being distributed by governments at subsidized

prices – is essential at the national level. In the context of global

warming, farmers in dry regions have little reason to adopt conservation

measures if governments subsidize their use of water.”

The report challenges the idea that less developed regions will suffer

disproportionately because of global warming:

“As temperatures rise, wood products obtained from warm settings will

increase, not decrease, and it is likely that the portion of global timber

supplies coming from the low latitudes will increase as the portion

harvested in temperate settings declines,” say Southgate and Sohngen.

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* “Weathering Global Warming in Agriculture and Forestry: It can be done

with free markets” By Douglas Southgate and Brent Sohngen in the Civil

Society Report on Climate Change,

http://www.csccc.info/reports/report_24.pdf

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

The Civil Society Report on Climate Change recommends various policies if

governments are concerned about the implications of climate change on

agriculture and forestry:

1. Remove all subsidies, price-distorting taxes, and regulations from

agriculture, forestry and related sectors. Such policies hinder the

ability of individual actors to adjust to changing circumstances, and thus

stifle the benefits that free competition yields in terms of managing

scarce resources.

2. Enable private ownership, exchange and management of land and water,

without bureaucratic intervention.

3. Privatize government-owned land and water. The combination of (2) and

(3) would enable effective and efficient pricing of water and other scarce

resources, meaning that people and entrepreneurs have an incentive to use

those resources more efficiently.

4. Governments should not unduly restrict the deployment of new

technologies, for instance, genetically modified crops and trees. Such

technologies offer real potential for humanity to use its resources more

efficiently, enabling us to adapt more effectively.

*The Civil Society Report on Climate Change (ISBN 1-905041-15-2, 100 pp.)

published December 2007 by the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change

(www.csccc.info).

http://www.csccc.info/reports/report_20.pdf

Tuesday, 10 December 2007, Bali, Indonesia: At the UN Climate meeting this week in Bali, ‘development’ NGOs, international agencies and some poor countries have claimed that government money in the form of ‘foreign aid’ channelled from wealthy countries to poor countries is the best way to create ‘adaptation’ to combat the effects of climate change.

Today, members of the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change (CSCCC) disputed this idea and called on governments to reform their policies so as to stop inhibiting the poor from adapting.

Barun Mitra of India’s Liberty Institute, one of the 42 CSCCC members, admonished the proponents of climate aid, saying:

“ ‘Development’ charities from rich countries rely heavily on taxpayer-funded aid given by their governments to poor countries. Selling poverty may be a very successful business model for these charities, but it also prolongs poverty. After all, the ‘end of poverty’ will put these charities out of business.”
It appears that industrialised countries are attempting to pay off government officials in poor countries in exchange for a post-2012 climate agreement. And it is no surprise that this is happening in Indonesia, which was recently rated 144^th on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index.

Mitra continued:

“The world’s poor countries are being tempted to bite the foreign aid carrot in exchange for cutting greenhouse gas emissions after 2012.

But cash for climate will fuel corruption, prolong inefficiencies, aggravate emissions, and perpetuate poverty, all in the name of ‘climate control’.”

Data published in the Civil Society Report on Climate Change (December 2007)* show clearly that foreign aid has been largely unsuccessful in stimulating economic growth or adaptation:

• From 1975 to 2002, foreign aid on average made no net contribution to the economic development of recipient countries.
• Since 1960, foreign aid has, on average, had no perceptible impact on life expectancy.

Essentially, foreign aid is a substitute for taxation. It alienates governments from their electorate, by undermining their incentive to respond to the needs of their people. It reduces the need for governments to promote economic development.
Clearly, foreign aid is the wrong solution to climate change. Members of the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change suggest that governments must stop inhibiting the poor from adapting. Specifically as this relates to climate change:

• Governments should enable people to own their property, so that the poor will be able to invest in robust buildings and technologies that insulate their exposure to climate.
• Governments should eliminate artificial barriers to entrepreneurship (such as licensing systems); i.e. it should allow entrepreneurs to supply insurance and infrastructure such as roads and bridges.

Government should eliminate restrictions that prevent people from accessing clean water, sewerage, and sanitation services. For instance, monopolies in services such as water and electricity should, at the very least, be subjected to competition from private entrepreneurs.

by Prof. Paul Reiter

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Human ecology and human behavior are the two key factors that determine the transmission of human infectious diseases. When the cycle of transmission includes mosquitoes, ticks, rodents or other intermediaries, their ecology and behavior are also critical. When multiple species are involved, the levels of complexity are even greater. Lastly, the virulence of the pathogen, the susceptibility of its vectors and hosts, the immunity of those hosts and the collective immunity of the host populations all contribute to the force of transmission. The significance of climate factors can only be assessed in the perspective of this daunting complexity.

Enteric infections: In the developing world, scarcity of basic needs such as shelter, food, clothing, electricity, clean water, education, and healthcare is the dominant factor in disease transmission. In wealthier countries, new and challenging problems have arisen as a result of economic success. Straightforward strategies are available to prevent infections in all these scenarios, given suitable economic resources. In nearly all cases, climate is at most a minor, often irrelevant parameter.

Mosquito-borne diseases: Mosquitoes are found throughout the world in all climates. Meteorological variables are of limited value as a guide to the population densities, behavior and geographic range of vector species. The same is true for the pathogens they transmit. Future changes in climate may result in minor changes in prevalence and incidence of mosquito-borne diseases, but the critical factors will remain human ecology and human behavior.

Tick-borne diseases: As with mosquito-borne diseases, the prevalence and incidence of tick-borne infections is affected by an incredible range of parameters. In northern temperate regions, for example, Tick-borne Encephalitis is influenced by agricultural practices, land-cover, populations of small mammals and their predators, small mammal immunology, population and behavior of large mammals, hunting, wild-life conservation, industrial activity, income levels, leisure activities, depth of winter snow, the micro timing of springtime temperatures, and summer rainfall and humidity. Moreover, the interaction of these variables is distributed over a two to three-year period. In the context of this complexity, it is ludicrous to claim a direct cause and effect relation between climate and infection.

In conclusion, it cannot be over-stressed that the ecology and natural history of disease transmission, particularly transmission by arthropods, involves the interplay of a daunting multitude of interacting factors that defy simplistic analysis. The rapid increase in the incidence of many diseases worldwide is a major cause for concern, but the principal determinants are politics, economics, human ecology and human behavior. A creative and organized application of resources to reverse this increase is urgently required, irrespective of any changes of climate.

Paul Reiter is a British scientist whose entire career has been devoted to the biology, ecology and behaviour of mosquitoes, the transmission dynamics and epidemiology of the diseases they transmit, and methods for their control. He worked for 22 years as a researcher in the Division of Vector-borne Infectious Diseases of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2003 he was appointed Professor at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, where he established a new unit of Insects and Infectious Disease.
He has led the entomological component of numerous field investigations of outbreaks of vector-borne disease on behalf of the US Government, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Pan American Health Organization. He is a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Committee on Vector Biology and Control, and has served as a consultant to governments worldwide.
He has been actively involved in the international debate on climate change for more than a decade. He served as a lead author for the US National Assessment of Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, and an Expert Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. He is a frequent commentator in the news media on this and other issues that concern vector-borne disease.