Megan Rowling
Before joining AlertNet, Megan Rowling worked as a freelance print and television journalist in Britain, France and Japan. At AlertNet, she specialises in the humanitarian impact of climate change. In 2008, she also spent several months working part-time as a media relations officer for the British Red Cross. She has an MSc in development management.
Calculating the human cost of climate change - help or hindrance?
Why does it seem so hard to put a credible face on the human impact of climate change? The latest effort to do so - a report commissioned the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF), a Geneva-based organisation led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and released on Friday - has been criticised for what some say is the shakiness of its data. The study, carried out by Dalberg Global Development Advisers, estimates that climate change kills about 315,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and weather disasters, with the annual death toll expected to rise to half a million by 2030. ...
Aid agencies struggle as soaring global needs outpace funding
Aid funds are running short for worsening humanitarian emergencies in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and the Horn of Africa, as political complexities and the global economic crisis dampen the generosity of governments and individual donors. Agencies in Sri Lanka, which are struggling to meet the basic needs of nearly 300,000 people displaced in the final stage of the country's civil war, are warning they only have enough money to keep their relief operations going for around another three months. ...
How well is the world doing in reducing disaster risk?
The risk of global economic losses from disasters is rising faster than the risk of deaths because countries have got better at preparing and responding but are still not thinking enough about how to reduce disasters in their planning and development activities, says a report from a United Nations body. In 2005, 168 countries adopted the Hyogo Framework of Action (HFA), a set of five priorities for achieving a substantial reduction in disaster losses - both in terms of lives and social, economic and environmental assets - by 2015. ...
Rich must keep promise to help poor adapt to climate change - commission
The world will fail to reach a new deal to tackle global warming unless rich countries stick to a promise to help poorer nations adapt to the harmful effects of climate change, says the final report of an international commission backed by the United Nations. "There can be no global agreement without adaptation assistance, and because of the nature of climate impacts, there will be much less global security without it," warns the Commission on Climate Change and Development, a body launched by the Swedish government in December 2007. The commission's 13 members include Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai and Gunilla Carlsson, Sweden's minister for international development. ...
Climate change now biggest health threat - report
Climate change is the biggest global threat to human health this century and will have devastating consequences, from spreading malaria and dengue to food shortages and increased deaths from heatwaves, researchers warn. A report on managing the health effects of climate change, launched jointly by the Lancet medical journal and University College London (UCL), says global warming will hurt the world's poorest most, even though they have contributed the least to carbon emissions. ...
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