A new United Nations report on climate change warns that global warming could cause more shortages of food in Africa, more severe weather events in Europe and the United States, the decimation of coral reefs and the disappearance of the ice caps. The report is being released today at a major conference on global warming in Brussels. Experts said the poorest people in the world will be hardest hit by the effects of climate change.

Australian scientist Roger Jones: “The two biggest areas of risk for impacts are the biodiversity and water. And amongst that, we see lots of other vulnerabilities. Some low-lying areas are vulnerable to sea level rise and to extreme events, of course. And in particular, drought and fire, I think, are some of the two biggest risks that we see.”

The report was written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which groups the work of 2,500 scientists from the around the world.

U.N. Under-Secretary General Achim Steiner: “I think we today know that the series of impacts that are associated with climate change cannot be isolated in terms of one phenomenon or another. A warmer winter may be one phenomenon that we will observe, but in fact, also in the richer countries in Europe and North America, we will see other effects that are associated with this — more extreme weather events, floods … These are all impacts that are part of the reality of living with climate change.”