Who suffers from global climate change
Although the richest, most developed countries in the world are overwhelmingly to blame for the catastrophe of global climate change, they are not the ones who will suffer the most from it. But who will? Of course, the poorest countries.
For more than a century, the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, in total as well as per capita, have been the big developed nations, most notably the United States and the countries of Europe, which grew their economies by burning fossil fuels and spewing carbon from their factories, homes, and cars. Today they still emit carbon and other greenhouse gasses disproportionately into the environment, although other big countries such as China and India have caught up. The unfairness of that is self-evident, but so is the truth of it.
Yet even as the wealthy nations drive the world toward ecological disaster, it is clearly the poor countries that will face the gravest consequences and have the most difficult problems. For instance, Bangladesh which is low-lying has already battered by increasingly powerful cyclones, could lose 10% of its territory to the ocean within a few decades, displacing 18 million people.
Political instability and violence, influenced in part by droughts and poor harvests, have already driven millions of people from their homes in sub-Saharan Africa and Central America.
A recent study from Stanford University found that climate change is exacerbating global income inequality between wealthy nations in cooler regions, and poor nations in hotter parts of the world. This is due, at least in part, to the relative inability of poorer countries to pay for the projects necessary to mitigate the effects of climate change, including more extreme weather events and the deterioration of arable land in subsistence economies.
For instance, Miami Beach is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to raise streets and install pumps in preparation for the expected flooding from rising seas — but Port-au-Prince, Haiti, only 700 miles away, simply doesn’t have the resources for such projects.
A report released last week found that extreme weather displaced 7 million people from their homes during the first half of 2019, especially in Asia and Africa. That set a new record, but researchers warned that the number of such events would increase as the climate continues to change.
So whose problem is this to fix? The simple answer, of course, is that the responsibility for mitigating climate change belongs to all of us: A global problem requires a global solution. We must all change our behavior and our policies.
But the effort must be led by the nations that reaped so many of the benefits of economic development and increased wealth through industrialization for so long. The poorest countries in the world need help to find the money, resources, and technology to move toward a sustainable future without plunging themselves much further into crushing poverty and inequality. The richer countries, though they will have enormous costs of their own, have a moral obligation to step up.
The call for “climate justice” is not new. In 2010 and then again at the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, wealthier nations pledged to donate to the so-called Green Climate Fund, building up to $100 billion per year by 2020. The fund was created under the auspices of the United Nations to help developing countries reduce the emissions that lead to climate change and adapt to the inevitable effects of it that are already underway. The goal of the fund is to use “public investment to stimulate private finance” for climate-related projects. It is governed by a board of representatives from 24 nations.
But in 2018, Oxfam found that the donor nations had fallen behind in meeting their pledge. The organization’s senior climate change policy advisor called the money moving from rich countries to the least developed and most vulnerable “sadly inadequate.” We would add: shameful. While the world burns, the politicians and bureaucrats fiddle.
At EBCF, we understand that the private sector and individuals have to be part of the solution against deforestation, poverty, and global warming. We aim to provide a platform where there will be an opportunity for the global community to participate side by side with us in our mission.
We see a world where sustainable values are the currency rather than just a by-product of financial donations and profit-driven strategies.
