TanzaniaBatilda Buran, environment minister of Tanzania, says: "The impacts of climate change to Tanzania are unfolding at devastating and unprecedented rates. About 80 per cent of the glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro have gone over the last 50 years"
Climate change is expected to have the most severe impact on water supplies, it said. "Shortages in future are likely to threaten food production, reduce sanitation, hinder economic development and damage ecosystems. It causes more violent swings between floods and droughts. Hundreds of millions of people are expected to become water stressed by climate change by the 2030."
Climate change is already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and is affecting 300m people, according to the first comprehensive study of the human impact of global warming.
It projects that increasingly severe heatwaves, floods, storms and forest fires will be responsible for as many as 500,000 deaths a year by 2030, making it the greatest humanitarian challenge the world faces.
Economic losses due to climate change today amount to more than $125bn a year. By 2030, the report says, climate change could cost $600bn a year.
"Climate change is life or death. It is the new global battlefield. It is being presented as if it is the problem of the developed world. But it's the developed world that has precipitated global warming."Nobel peace prizewinner Wangari Maathai
"Let us not allow mistrust, pessimism and lack of ambition to take us stumbling into profound dangers. Instead let us have real vision and leadership in both developed and developing countries which seize the opportunities offered by Copenhagen, for us, our children and future generations," the Prince of Wales
