Assessing Species Vulnerability To Climate Change: Impacts On Communities, Animals, Plants, And Essay.

Discuss About The Assessing Species Vulnerability To Climate Change.

The Impact of Climate Change on Communities

The aim of this essay is to discuss the issues of climate change and its effect on the lives of the human beings and other plant and animal species of the earth. The significance of climate change in the current environment setting is far reaching and more intense that can gradually lead to the complete destruction of the ecosystem and thus life on the earth. The weather patterns have changed due to climate change that strongly influence on the habitat of the animals as well as human beings. management, for this issue, the human beings are more responsible. The increased carbon emission from the transportation systems, thermal power plants and other carbon emitting alliances are contributing in increasing global warming which is the main reason of climate change (Melillo, Richmond and Yohe 2014). There are social and economic aspects of this particular environmental problem and this has increased as the farmers around the world are suffering for extreme weather change and precipitation patterns. The inhabitants near the sea coast are also vulnerable as the rise of sea level has started to affect their habitation.

This essay will discuss the why the climate change issue is of contemporary and future eco-social significance. This also details the communities and plant and animal species are getting effected by the global climate change. This essay will identify the major drivers of climate change both natural as well as the anthropogenic drivers. It will outline social and community responses to the issue and detail how the local and global campaigns and eco-political strategies can effectively help to developed to further address the problem of climate change.

The problem of climate change has become a pressing issue among the environmentalists and this change will be economic as well as social also. According to Kerr et al. (2015) proper understanding of these complex interactions of these issues is important as this is the only way through which the concept of sustainability will come into existence. This is the only key that can help the government and people to enact effective policies and abide by them.in this century, the government of the countries all around the world have started to perceive the global climate change problem through the lenses of economy and sociology.

The global climate change is the main responsible factor for the suffering of the small farmers, poor and the communities depend upon the natural resources. To Fann et al. (2015). he farmers of both the developed as well as developing countries are already struggling to get the price of their products, competing with the large monoculture agricultural systems and safeguarding their products from the pests and weather. Due to the shift of the climate in the agricultural zones, the production pattern is also changing. Changing temperature and extreme precipitation patterns are affecting the crops and taking way the livelihood and income of these farmers’ families. As mentioned by Zachariadis (2016) small farmers are the integral part of the society, this can threaten the food supply and security and inverse volatility of global food price. Climate change has become a social problem as this is increasing poverty level and number of under privileged people are increasing. The water shortage originated from this issue which will increase the number of people under fresh water scarcity. Due to disruption of property and infrastructure, the government are forced to use the funds to repaired and rebuild those affected areas.

The Impact of Climate Change on Animal and Plant Species

Due to climate change the rural and urban poor are one of the most affected communities. Despite the fact that the government of the countries are assisting these people though their funds and other agencies but the number is increasing due to extreme drought and flood that is growing number of displaced people in the rural areas (Anderegg 2015). On the other hand, Zachariadis (2016) has stated that the poor people in the urban area are affected by the increase in temperature and pollution of air, water and land. The communities of the developing countries who still depend upon the natural resources for their living are getting affected unpleasantly. The populations living near the sea levels are affected tremendously as they are exposed to the rising sea levels, hence are being relocated. For instance, the population of the village near the sea of Fiji started to relocate and moved 1 km further in the inland due to the governments’ climate change program. This was due to the fact that the rising sea water already started to flood the village near sea (Kløve et al. 2014). Moreover, some of the islands in the Pacific Ocean are declared to be uninhabited as these are gradually sinking in the rising sea level which means the entire life on these islands will disappear. In addition to this, the women, children and elderly people as these communities do not have much resources to support them in the problem situation, they get affected more intensely with the flood, drought, cyclone and earthquake originated due to global climate change.

Due to global climate change, not only the human beings are getting affected but the animal and plant species are also facing survival problems in this earth. As mentioned before, the weather patterns have changed sue to climate change which has a strong influence on the habitat of the animals (Zachariadis 2016). With the increase of temperature of sea water as well as land, the animals are forced to migrate into other parts of the region to survive. However, many of these species have not been able to adapt with the new environment thus their population has declined. To the environmentalists, if this drastic change on the weather pattern continues, one fourth of the animal species will be extinct within 30 years (Wiebe et al. 2015). The species like polar bear in the arctic region are getting affected by the increasing warmth, coral reef found in the ocean of Australia is heading towards extinction as the elevated temperatures tend to fact the argues need for these corals to survive. This extreme weather condition is affecting the land animals and more precisely the domestic animals as due to flood they are obliged to leave their habitats and drought cause them to be killed due to hunger.

Major Drivers of Climate Change

Major drivers of climate change include both natural as well as anthropogenic drivers. Among the natural drivers, the solar irradiance and chemicals originated from the volcanoes are important to discuss. Changes in the solar irradiance has direct effect on the climate system as this is the primary source of energy on the earth. Longer term of solar irradiance has been made though proper is of sunspot records and proxy indicators like the amount of carbon rings. The recent analysis of proxies reveals that solar irradiance is causing 20^th century’s global warming (Barange et al. 2014). On the other hand, the volcanic eruption leads to emission of poisonous gases in the atmosphere. Explosive volcanic eruptions inject a substantial amount of SO₂ or Sulphur di oxide and ash into the stratosphere which cause climate change of that place. These chemicals add mass to the preexisting particles and enhance attenuation of the sunlight transmitted through stratosphere increasing the aerosol depth.

Among the anthropocentric drivers, the human activities which are increasing the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is the most important to discuss. The human activities like stationary energy resources, for example the coal fired power stations, transport, coal mines, and usage, agriculture, land change and wastes (Jeppesen et al. 2014). The human-induced increase of greenhouse gases in environment is considered to be the anthropogenic climate change. The main building components of the greenhouse gases are water vapor and carbon dioxide. The later is the largest single contributor to the human climate change. It is the main control knob which governs the temperature of the earth. This along with methane, Nitrous oxide and Chlorofluorocarbon together with the water vapor present in the atmosphere contribute to the greenhouse effect of the earth (Pacifici et al. 2015). Through these human activities, the amount of carbon di oxide in the atmosphere is increasing which is gradually enhancing the temperature of the earth. In addition to this, deforestation, urbanization and other human activities are supporting the greenhouse gas to increase in the global atmosphere. These are resulting in the climate change of the world.

In the social and community responses to climate change have led to formation of different projects and activities to focus on the community engagement along with mobilization. In the various part of the world different organizations and groups like Climate Action Group are growing effective (Settele et al. 2015). The carbon conversations programs and prevention of global warming regulations have created far reaching impact on the understanding of the factors related to the climate change. These social and community responses have been focusing on the practical activities, which analyses issues relating to the climate change mitigation. These community responses are currently operating in three broad categories. First if the sustainable and efficient energy projects that aim to the development of more sources of renewable energy and reduce the community consumptions of energy and fuels. According to Field et al. (2014) this will be covering the reduction of fuel and energy consumption. This include the increase of household fuel efficiencies and development of the sustainable transport system.

Social and Community Responses to the Issue

Secondly, localization activities aim to reduce the demand for goods. This project is helping people to travel a long distance and increase resilience of the local communities to the global economic shocks (Jeppesen et al. 2016). This will be helping the farmer communities as well as the people near the vulnerable areas to manage the climate change. Thirdly, the project will be focusing on the commodity Lifecyle activities (Field et al. 2014). This type of project will be helping the community’s topo reduce the consumption of products through reusing and sharing things. This also includes reduction in packaging, increase recycling and exploring closed looped manufacturing systems.

In order to address this issue of climate change, both new or existing community campaigns and eco-political strategies are being used to build successful projects that can efficiently mitigate climate change problems in the social and economic facets of human life (Field et al. 2014). I personally feel that campaigns and eco-political strategies include aligning local as well as national strategies and priorities with the activities, development and promotion of a platform of support for the local projects, building on the existing resources and services. These existing programs need to create awareness among the communities to take initiatives to reduce greenhouse emission though their activities. This process will include the increase of the recycling process in their household such as glass, metal, cardboard and newsprint. The enhanced usage of solar and other renewable energies in the household system (Field et al. 2014). Through insulating home, energy efficient home appliances and cleaning air conditioning filters regularly, the communities will be able to support prevention of climate change programs. In addition to the main process of mitigating problems of greenhouse effect on the earth is the reforestation. I think the community programs can effectively solve such problems. Through planting native and drought resistant shrubs and trees in the community areas. These projects and programs if implemented and supported properly can solve the issues of climate thoroughly.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the issues of climate change have far reaching effect on the existence of human beings and other plant and animal species in the world. Proper understanding of the complex interactions of environment, social and economic factors is important as this is the only way through which the concept of sustainability will come into existence. The farmers, people residing near the sea coast, people facing fresh water scarcity are the most vulnerable groups to fac the blow of climate change. This changed weather patterns originated from climate change has a strong influence on the habitat of the animals for which the animals and plat species are not being able to adapt themselves with the new climate thus many of them are being extinct. However, there are numerous existing programs and community projects initiated to support the communities facing blow of climate change but these need more awareness and investment.

References:

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Barange, M., Merino, G., Blanchard, J.L., Scholtens, J., Harle, J., Allison, E.H., Allen, J.I., Holt, J. and Jennings, S., 2014. Impacts of climate change on marine ecosystem production in societies dependent on fisheries. Nature Climate Change, 4(3), p.211.

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