The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen has failed to reach a deal on the reduction targets of industrialized and emerging nations for greenhouse-gas emissions, although it set a goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius over the coming years and developed nations made a financial commitment to help poor nations cope with the effect of climate change.
Last month, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) published "State of World Population 2009 — Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate," which focuses on other aspects of the climate change issue such as how climate change affects people and what kinds of policies, apart from energy efficiency and industry-related policies, should be pursued to mitigate the effects of global warming.
It notes that climate change hits the poor hardest, especially women who make up the majority of the world's 1.5 billion people living on less than $1 a day. Since the poor tend to live in areas vulnerable to rising sea levels, severe drought and fierce downpours, climate change is expected to worsen poverty and health problems as well as trigger large-scale migrations.
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