A/HRC/31/52 Particularly at risk are agricultural and construction workers as well as children, homeless people, the elderly, and women who have to walk long hours to collect water”.12 25. Climate change will compound the problem of access to safe drinking water, currently denied to about 1.1 billion people. It has been estimated that about 8 per cent of the global population will see a severe reduction in water resources with a 1°C rise in the global mean temperature, rising to 14 per cent at 2°C.13 More generally, as a result of reduced rainfall and snowpack, increased evaporation, and contaminated freshwater resources due to rising sea levels, climate change is projected to reduce the availability of water in most dry subtropical regions and to increase the frequency of droughts in many already-dry areas.14 26. With respect to the right to food, climate change is already impairing the ability of some communities to feed themselves, and the number affected will grow as temperatures rise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that “all aspects of food security are potentially affected by climate change, including food access, utilization, and price stability”.15 It is very likely that climate change will adversely impact the production of major crops, such as wheat, rice and maize, in both tropical and temperate regions. 16 27. As the Human Rights Council has recognized, the worst effects of climate change are felt by those who are already vulnerable because of factors such as geography, poverty, gender, age, indigenous or minority status, national or social origin, birth or other status and disability.17 In the words of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally or otherwise marginalized are especially vulnerable to climate change and also to some adaptation and mitigation responses”.18 The Panel states that “future impacts of climate change, extending from the near term to the long term, mostly expecting 2°C scenarios, will slow down economic growth and poverty reduction, further erode food security, and trigger new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger”.19 28. Climate change will contribute to forced migration, but the ability to migrate often depends on mobility and resources. As a result, those who are most vulnerable may be unable to migrate, instead remaining in locations that are subject to the harms caused by climate change. Those who do migrate may be particularly vulnerable to human rights abuses, since they may often be doing so in an irregular process (see A/67/299, para. 36). 29. Climate change threatens the very existence of some small island States. Global warming expands ocean waters and melts land-based ice, causing sea levels to rise. Long before islands are inundated, climate change may make them uninhabitable by increasing the frequency and severity of storm surges or by causing sea water to invade their freshwater resources. If the residents of small island States are forced to evacuate and find other homes, the effects on their human rights, including their rights to self-determination and to development, will be devastating. 30. Climate change also threatens to devastate the other forms of life that share this planet with us. As the world warms, increasingly disastrous consequences will ensue. One 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 8 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, p. 811. Ibid., p. 250. UNEP report, p. 3. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, p. 488. UNEP report, p. 5 (citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, p. 488). Resolution 29/15. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, p. 6. Ibid., p. 796.