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Study: Climate change affects those least responsible

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY


In an eye-catching map, researchers at McGill University show the irony long suspected by scientists -- that countries producing the least greenhouse gases per-capita are often the most vulnerable to climate change.


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"Take Somalia for instance," study co-author Jason Samson, a PhD candidate in McGill's Department of Natural Resource Sciences, said in announcing the findings. "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," he added, "we have concrete quantitative evidence of the disparity between the causes and the consequences of climate change at a national level."

Samson and other researchers combined climate data with censuses covering nearly 97% of the world's population in order to forecast potential changes in local populations for 2050. They employed the same modeling techniques as those used to study how plants and animals respond to climate change.

The study was published last week by the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography. It was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada.

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