Raising Awareness

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Drawing attention to key humanitarian concerns

The Human Face of Climate Change

"Climate change is still considered a solely environmental problem. It is seen as a distant threat that might affect our future- a viewpoint reinforced by pictures of glaciers and polar bears — not human beings"
Kofi Annan

The “Human Impact Report: Climate Change - The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis” is the first major report to comprehensively document the full impact of climate change on human society. The report compiles the latest research from wide-ranging sources and creates a plausible account of today's human impact of climate change worldwide. The report aims to help refocus the climate change debate, long centered on distant environmental or future scenarios, towards its current human effects, breaking the silence of millions who are suffering.

The report provides a first assessment of the impacts of climate change on: health, poverty, water, human displacement, security and development. The report’s findings indicate that climate change is responsible each year for hundreds of thousands of deaths. It is a serious threat to over half the world’s population. Worst affected are some of the world’s poorest groups.

The report was compiled by Dalberg Global Development Advisors under supervision of the Global Humanitarian Forum, and reviewed by an esteemed Review Panel prior to publication.

Read the full report here.

Climate change is a global problem with varying local effects. In the words of Kofi Annan: “People everywhere deserve not to suffer because of climate change. People everywhere deserve a future for their children. People everywhere deserve to have leaders who find the courage to achieve a solution to this crisis.” Above all, it is a fundamental injustice that the world’s poorest groups, who are responsible for less than 1% of global emissions that are the principle cause of climate change, suffer 99% of the casualties it brings.

The Forum works to analyze and raise awareness on the various facets of climate justice. The Forum's campaigning work on climate justice aims at public mobilization and sensitization around key political opportunities for tackling climate change, notably the negotiations leading to the UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen this December (COP-15). The Forum`s work is carried out in close cooperation with key members of the global civil society, such as Oxfam, Greenpeace, WWF, Avaaz, the Global Campaign for Action Against Poverty, 350.org, the World Council of Churches, Christian Aid, and many others.