Mapping human vulnerability to climate change

MAR. 3, 2011

First global map suggests climate change will have 
greatest impact 
on the populations least responsible 
for causing the problem

Researchers already study how various species of 
plants and animals migrate 
in response to climate change. Now, 
Jason Samson, a PhD candidate in 
McGill University’s Department of Natural 
Resource Sciences, has taken 
the innovative step of using the same analytic tools to measure 
the impact of climate change on human populations. 
Samson and fellow researchers combined climate change 
data with censuses covering close to 97 per-cent of the 
world’s population in order to forecast potential changes in 
local populations for 2050.

Samson’s team found that if populations continue to 
increase at the expected rates, those who are likely to 
be the most vulnerable to climate change are the 
people living in low-latitude, hot regions of the world, 
places like central South America, the Arabian Peninsula 
and much of Africa. In these areas, a relatively small 
increase in temperature will have serious consequences 
on a region’s ability to sustain a growing population.”
It makes sense that the low latitude tropical regions 
should be more vulnerable 
because the people there already experience extremely 
hot conditions which make agriculture challenging. 
An increase in temperature over the next few decades 
will only make their lives more difficult in a 
variety of ways,” says Samson.

This contrasts with Samson’s predictions about the impact 
of climate change on human populations in the high-latitude 
more temperate zones of the world, where the temperature 
change is expected to be greater. Because the spread of human 
populations along with their activities are already more 
constrained by the cooler conditions in these regions, 
the researchers expect that climate change will have 
less of an impact on people living in these areas.

The study also points to clear inequities in the causes 
and consequences of climate change: the countries 
that have contributed the least to climate change, 
based on their average per-capita carbon dioxide 
emissions, are nevertheless predicted to be the most 
vulnerable to its impacts. “Take Somalia for instance,” 
suggests Samson.”Because it’s so hot there, it’s already 
very difficult to grow things, and it will only become 
more difficult if the temperature rises. It’s also clear 
that Somalia is not a big contributor of greenhouse 
gas to the atmosphere. Now thanks to this map, 
we have concrete quantitative evidence of the 
disparity between the causes and the consequences 
of climate change at a national level.”

Samson anticipates this data could be useful for decision 
makers around the world in the ongoing international 
negotiations around climate change.”

The research was funded by the Natural 
Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC).

On online version of the article was recently published 
by the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography

For an abstract of the article: 
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00632.x/abstract

A copy of the full article is available on request.

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