The physical environment supports every other aspect of life. Canadians are familiar with this reality because so much of our economic activity is from natural resource-based industries, such as agriculture, energy, forestry, fishing, and tourism.

Human economies around the globe have already felt the impacts of climate change. Some countries, however, have been hit worse than others and face increasingly bleak futures. Some of the most vulnerable areas include:

• low-lying nations and island states
• coastlines and deltas
• regions already vulnerable to drought and desertification
• fragile mountain ecosystems. ⁹¹

In 2001, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that the impacts of climate change could cost the world's economy more than $US300-billion a year and, that by 2050, losses for low-lying states could exceed 10 per cent of their gross domestic product. ⁹²

Even before considering the impacts of climate change, human activity is having a huge negative impact on the Earth? ecosystems. And, the demand on the planet? resources grows significantly each year due to the combination of rising per capita consumption levels and increasing population. Poverty and desperation due to famines, drought, deforestation, water shortages, floods, fires and disease epidemics already produce great numbers of ecological refugees. For example, the flooding of China's Yangtze River in 1998 displaced 14 million people ⁹³. With the worst impacts of climate change for already stressed ecosystems yet to come, ecological refugees are likely to be a major global concern of this century.

The acceleration of conditions that create ecological refugees could widen the gap between rich and poor and have a serious impact on both the global economy and global security. If all the climate change impacts were felt, conflicts could be ignited by competition over dwindling natural resources and cross-border movement of environmental refugees. ⁹⁴

Societies are not equal in their ability to adapt to climate change. Populations that can barely meet their basic needs are unlikely to be able to afford measures to help them cope with climate change. In essence, the poorest nations are hardest hit. Those who get the least economic benefit from the use of the atmosphere to absorb greenhouse gases will likely suffer the greatest cost from the effects of climate change. This makes climate protection more than an economic and environmental issue –it becomes a fundamental human development and social justice issue. International plans to protect the climate must narrow, not widen, the existing gap between rich and poor.

Responding effectively to climate change

An effective response to climate change must focus on combining two broad strategies:

• Mitigation: Moderating the effects of climate change by slowing the rise in concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases and stabilizing them at lower levels than would happen under "business-as-usual" scenarios
• Adaptation: Adapting to those climate changes that will occur no matter how much we can slow it down to manageable levels. Adaptation means making major adjustments to the ways we manage and use natural resources; for example, we may need to change the rate at which we harvest forests, plant different kinds of crops, and rethink the way we use water

The science of predicting regional climate change and its impacts on ecosystems is still too uncertain to forecast specific responses and economic and social impacts with much accuracy. However, the uncertainty means that scientists could either underestimate or overestimate the impacts and costs. In most cases (unless otherwise indicated), the projected effects described in this section are based on "business as usual"; that is, an absence of major mitigation efforts.

This section explores the effects that climate change is predicted to have on Canadian society and the selected elements of the Canadian economy, specifically:

• Subsistence hunting
• Hydroelectricity
• Agriculture
• Forestry
• Fisheries
• Human health
• Infrastructure and transportation
• Tourism and recreation

For more information:

Visit Natural Resources Canada, Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation website. From there, you can link to a report that provides a Canadian perspective on this topic and also to a poster series depicting the regional impacts of climate change in Canada. The Canada Country Study also looked at climate projections and impacts at the regional level.

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91. Source: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Agenda 21
92. Source: United Nations Environment Programme
93. Source: BBC News
94. Source: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Climate Change Factsheet