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Modern man has made himself more vulnerable to the impact of climate change because of getting so many other things wrong. If it was not for already existing man-made environmental problems such as over-fishing, acid-mine drainage, poor land and waste management and invasive alien species, modern society and our environment might have been better able to cope with climate change.
In a presentation to parliament in Cape Town recently, a group of researchers described climate change "as an integrated and accumulated result of several of man's mistakes" now adding a quantum to these other threats - making the environment and modern society less resilient and more vulnerable to the impact of climate change.
In their Position Statement on Climate Change and Related Issues three CSIR researchers, along with researchers from the universities of Pretoria and Cape Town and the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), argue that the impact of climate change is going to be felt more because of modern society's inability to live sustainably.
"Climate change is manifesting in changes to the pre-industrial envelope of variability in climate and seasonal patterns. This in turn is causing changes to the structure and functions of terrestrial and marine ecosystems within which our modern human society has developed. Our society functions within what we have come to regard as the 'normal' envelope of tolerated variability - for example, day to night, summer to winter. Occasionally the boundaries of natural variability are exceeded to a degree to which we are either not accustomed to - say a 1 in a 100 years storm - or, of which there is no living memory. These are characterised as extreme events. Occasionally events occur that are of a magnitude that cannot be managed - for examples volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis - and are regarded as natural disasters," they write.
While natural occurrences of extreme events with catastrophic impacts are common in the history of the planet, it is predicted with high confidence, that extreme events will be more intense and more frequent in future, thereby exceeding the envelope of variability that we have become used to, and in which modern civilisations evolved: "The precise impacts are still the subject of much research and debate, but there are likely to be material effects on many economic activities such as food production, fisheries and waste assimilation, as well as direct consequences for the health and safety of people."
And unfortunately it is going to be the poor and vulnerable who is going to suffer the most (as they are already). At present our society is so poorly adapted that it cannot even tolerate current seasonal variability or extreme events: "While coastal infrastructure is damaged by winter storms, and droughts and floods impact negatively on the production of crops, poor people die from lack of sanitation, wind-fuelled shack fires, pneumonia, diarrhoea, cholera and malaria. This is exacerbated by the impacts of malnutrition and HIV.
"Increasing urbanisation, poor urban and rural land management have reduced the resilience of our environment and society to cope with existing and future climate and environmental changes. Climate change has more to do with increased vulnerability and risk by virtue of mal-adaption than changing threat levels," they conclude.
"In order to deal with these current and urgent problems, development and economic growth is required on a massive scale. This in turn requires increased energy supply and infrastructure development, improved health and educational services, and, most important, protection of the environment to increase natural resilience to these extreme events," writes Drs Neville Sweijd, Pedro Monteiro and Bob Scholes (all CSIR), Dr Guy Midgley (SANBI), and Profs George Philander, Clifford Shearing, Bruce Hewiston (all from UCT), and Prof Rashid Hassan (UP).
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