Climate and race: who is most affected by climate change?

Is climate change racist? It’s a question that is going to get a variety of answers. For some, it’ll be an obvious no — what’s race got to do with it? Others will answer yes without hesitation. Of course climate change is racist.

The difference between those two responses is going to be in large part down to how we understand racism. If our definition of racism is only racist prejudice — the racism of racists — then obviously climate change isn’t racist. It doesn’t hold opinions. How could it be?

But if we understand racism to be structural, or systemic, then climate change can be read that way. It is People of Colour who stand to lose the most from the climate crisis, and if something disadvantages people on the basis of race, it is racist.

Who suffers from climate change?

Climate change affects people of colour most, and that is true both internationally and locally. At the international level, warmer countries are less able to adapt to global warming — that should be obvious really. An extra couple of degrees is going to be more dangerous in the Sahel than it is Scotland.

People are also more vulnerable to climate change if they are economically marginalised. Poorer countries are less able to adapt, and that puts Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia at the front line of climate mayhem.

Here’s a map of climate vulnerability, as compiled by the Global Adaptation Initiative at Notre Dame University:

The global divide is clear: it is the Black and Brown countries of the global south that face the most dangerous effects of climate change.

Environmental justice

This divide is visible locally too, with ethnic minority communities often more vulnerable to storm damage or other climate change effects, and with fewer resources to move or adapt.

Climate justice campaigns, and the environmental justice movement more generally, have been sounding the alarm for years about the disproportionate affects of environmental harm on People of Colour, Indigenous communities and minorities.

Sites such as waste dumps, incinerators or landfill sites are often in Black neighbourhoods, an environmental injustice that reflects existing economic injustice. Many communities suffer the harm of climate change twice. They put up with the damage from the fossil fuel industry — through air or water pollution from mines and refineries — and then they are more exposed to the risks of climate change caused by the burning of those fossil fuels.

Who is least affected?

To flip the question around, those least affected by climate change are likely to be those who live in a temperate climate, inland, in places that are wealthy enough to adapt and protect themselves.

Nobody is immune from climate change. It is a global phenomenon that will touch everyone eventually, but some are at the back of the queue. Consulting the map of climate vulnerability again, we see that North America and Western Europe are set to fare better than most.

These are majority White regions. There is a racial dynamic to the harm of climate change.

This unequal exposure to risk is an injustice in itself, but it is exponentially worse because of who causes climate change. Historically, it is these very countries, the least susceptible to climate harm, who have done the most to cause it.

And that is another article.