Climate change ‘number one issue’

Levies have been breached by severe flooding from intensified storms linked to climate change [Erika Blumenfeld/AJE]

El Salvador is “already” facing wild weather, the country’s environment minister tells Al Jazeera.

San Salvador – “We have a very clear position,” El Salvador’s Minister of Environment, Herman Chavez, told Al Jazeera at his office in San Salvador, the capital.

“The President of El Salvador, last year on July 20th, in an extraordinary meeting of presidents that was convened here in San Salvador, launched the intervention process. We put Climate Change as the number one issue for the region.”

The government of El Salvador’s position, which mirrors that of other Central American countries like Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras, is due to the fact that anthropogenic (human caused) climate change is impacting the planet more than ever, and scientists expect it to worsen.

In January, new figures provided by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that Earth’s global average surface temperature for 2010 tied 2005 for the hottest year on record. The two agencies’ figures also showed that 2010 was the wettest year ever recorded.

Read the rest of this article at Al-Jazeera English.