Climate change and its impact on human lives – Introduction
Climate change affects every one of us in varying degrees. For example, shifting weather patterns affect food production and rising sea levels increase the risk of severe flooding. Vulnerable communities, especially women and children, bear the brunt of the impact of climate change.
Outcomes
On completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- identify the impact of climate change on agriculture, natural resources and human lives, and
- assess the connection between changes in the environment and the impacts of climate change by exploring the following topics:
- Weather and climate: Are they the same?
- What is climate change?
- The impact of climate change on human life
Terminology
Vulnerability: The state of being at risk of being adversely affected by climate change. It describes how strongly people or ecosystems are likely to be affected by climate change.
Resilience: A person’s or community’s capacity to prepare for and recover from the consequences of a climate disaster without causing further harm to the community or environment.
Atmosphere: The mixture of gases that surrounds Earth or other planets.
Biodiversity: The variety of living things — including animals, plants, fungi and bacteria — in the natural world.
Species: A set of animals or plants that share characteristics and can breed with each other.
Extinction: The complete disappearance of a species from Earth.
Carbon sink: Anything that absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases — for example, plants, the ocean and soil.
Natural resources: Resources that occur naturally in the environment without requiring any intervention by human beings. Some examples of natural resources are air, sunlight, water, soil, plants, animals and fossil fuels.
Wetlands: A distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently for years or decades or seasonally for shorter periods.
Ocean acidification: A process in which seawater becomes more acidic because it is absorbing excess carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.
Ecosystem: A community of interacting living organisms — plants, animals and microbes — and their physical environment.
Permafrost: A permanently frozen layer on or under Earth’s surface.
Glacier: Large, thick masses of ice that form on land when fallen snow is compressed into ice over many centuries.
Food security: When all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
Salinity ingress: Process of saltwater entering areas that previously contained fresh water.
Habitat: A place or environment where a plant or animal naturally or normally lives and grows.
Threatened species: Plants and animals that are likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future.
Endangered species: Plants and animals that have become so rare they are in danger of becoming extinct.
Invasive species: An organism that is not indigenous, or native, to a particular area.
