On February 11, I will join my CARE colleague, Cynthia Awuor, and demographers Alex de Sherbinin and Susana Adamo to give a briefing on Capitol Hill about the human face of climate change. I am looking forward to the opportunity to help members of Congress and their staff better understand not only the challenge we face, but also how policymakers can address this challenge and how humanitarian organizations are already adapting the way we do business in light of the realities of climate change.

Until recently, climate change science has been, for the most part, defined by top-down, model- and climate-scenario based impact assessments, which attempt to project the expected level of impact of unmitigated climate change on human and ecological systems using biophysical indicators, such as water stress, agricultural output, and infectious disease distribution. Very few studies to date have looked at biophysical risk together with social, economic, and political vulnerability.

The most climate change insecure populations will be those with the highest biophysical risks and the greatest social, economic, and political vulnerability. Take Zimbabwe for example. The country is prone to climate-related hazards, such as droughts and cyclones. It will likely experience water scarcity and a decline in agricultural production as a result of climate change. On top of these biophysical risks, however, Zimbabwe is also currently dealing with political and financial crises as well as an HIV/AIDS crisis.  The HIV/AIDS crisis alone has left many women widowed and struggling to survive. And because they are women, they do not by law have access to land tenure, they have been excluded from disaster risk reduction efforts, and they have not benefited from improved agricultural technologies and water resource management techniques. Their livelihoods will become even more insecure in the face of climate change.

At the briefing, which is being co-sponsored by the Population Resource Center, I will present a report CARE and UNOCHA released last year on the humanitarian implications of climate change. The report is exciting because it does something new. It lays existing data about social, economic and political vulnerability on top of climate projection data about specific hazards associated with climate change – floods, cyclones and drought.  When we look at social, economic and political vulnerability together with climate projection data, we can begin to more carefully identify and pinpoint hotspots of high humanitarian risk under changing climate conditions. And this helps us target our resources more effectively – to those who need it most.

In the end, though, what matters most is not the climate models, projections and reports. What really matters is how people in the world’s poorest communities, who already struggle to survive without having to deal with the harsh realities of climate change, are affected by and facing this new challenge – in concrete and real life terms. My CARE colleague, Cynthia, a native of Kenya, will help put a human face on climate change by talking about what she is seeing and hearing, on the ground, about the impact of climate change on people living in extreme poverty.

Together we hope to expand members’ and staff’s view of the impact of climate change to include its dire consequences on the world’s most vulnerable people.  We look forward to a fruitful discussion about how we can work together – as policymakers, NGOs, and local communities – to face and overcome the humanitarian challenge of climate change.

For Members of Congress and staff who want to learn more about the specific humanitarian impacts of climate change in these regions – and about how CARE is using the findings from this report to change the way we plan and do our business – please join us on February 11.

The CARE/UNOCHA report on the humanitarian implications of climate change is also available on our CARE climate change website: www.careclimatechange.org. To learn more about CARE and the work we do more broadly around the world, visit www.care.org.

Christina Chan currently serves as Senior Policy Analyst for CARE USA.