What is Climate Change?

In rich countries like Scotland we use a lot of energy to power factories, heat our houses and travel from place to place by car, boat and plane. This produces greenhouse gas emissions which are building up in the earth’s atmosphere and causing our planet to heat up.

As the earth gets warmer, it causes unpredictable and dangerous changes to the weather. Floods, droughts and hurricanes are becoming more common and it is people in developing countries that are most at risk even though they have done the least to cause the problem.

Many poor communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America do not have cars, fridge-freezers, DVD players or computers. They produce very few greenhouse gas emissions – for example in 2005 just one Scottish power station, Longannet on the River Forth, produced more CO2 emissions than ten sub-Saharan African countries combined – yet they are suffering most as a result of climate change.

Poor farmers are no longer sure when to plant their crops. In some places, drought is causing the land to dry up, killing plants and animals. In other areas tropical storms are causing floods and landslides which destroy homes and wash away crops.

SCIAF is helping communities affected by climate change to learn new ways of growing food and earning a living so that they are less vulnerable to the changing weather. We also help them to store food and water for when times are tough and give them training so that they know how to protect themselves when disaster strikes.