Lyndsay Walsh: Address Global Inequality by Tackling Climate Change
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: LYNDSAY WALSH
- Published: December 1, 2019
Overview
- Premise: Climate change is central to addressing 21st-century global inequality; without limiting warming, past gains reducing inequality could be nullified.
- Author: LYNDsAY WALSH, graduate in natural sciences of Trinity College Dublin, studying for a master’s in development practice.
- Framing: Climate change both creates new inequalities and exacerbates existing ones across and within countries, affecting health, livelihoods, displacement, infrastructure, and governance.
Evidence of inequality impacts
- Climate-driven disruptions disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries:
- Examples include annual flooding in Dakar, Senegal; encroaching semiarid Sahel on former fertile farmland; California’s deadliest wildfires with record land burnt to ash.
- Lake Chad has shrunk 90 percent in the past 50 years.
- In Madagascar, over 70 percent of the population are rural farmers, making drought-induced crop losses especially devastating.
- Health and social consequences:
- Increased flooding will spread waterborne diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
- Cases of malnutrition are expected to rise dramatically as droughts reduce crop yields.
- Predicted expansion of diseases such as malaria with warming.
- Displacement and conflict:
- The World Bank predicts there may be up to 140 million "climate migrants" by 2050.
- People in poorer countries are roughly five times more likely to be displaced by weather events.
- Currently, 84 percent of refugees are within low-income countries.
Climate responsibility and distribution of emissions
- Historical and current emissions burden:
- The United States is responsible for 26 percent of global cumulative greenhouse gases.
- Europe is responsible for an additional 22 percent.
- The entire continent of Africa contributes just 3.8 percent.
- Within-country inequality examples:
- "Climate gentrification": properties at higher elevations in inland Miami becoming more expensive due to flooding risks, leaving those unable to buy safety in riskier areas.
- Capacity differences:
- High-income countries have greater fiscal capacity to invest in adaptation (example: Shanghai flood-defense project expected to cost £5 billion).
- Low-income countries lack capital to invest in similar protective infrastructure.
Mitigation and adaptation: roles and actors
- Two primary responses: mitigation (reducing emissions) and adaptation (preparing for impacts).
- Public opinion as leverage:
- A recent poll found that 73 percent of Americans now believe that climate change is occurring.
- 72 percent said it was personally important to them.
- Large citizen protests (over 70,000 in Brussels in January) and legal actions by citizens in multiple countries indicate growing public pressure.
- Role of private sector:
- The 2017 Carbon Majors Report found that just 100 companies have produced over 70 percent of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.
- The private sector can drive systemic change, mitigate emissions, and reduce poverty through employment.
- Role of governments and multilateral cooperation:
- Environmental policies cited include carbon taxes, national adaptation plans, and participation in multilateral treaties.
- Carbon taxation is framed as a mechanism to speed development and adoption of alternative fuel sources.
- Climate change is a transboundary issue requiring global collaboration to both mitigate effects and assist lower-income countries with adaptation.
Policy recommendations and urgency
- Priority actions:
- High-income countries, being responsible for the majority of emissions, must minimize theirs and support low-income countries’ adaptation.
- Mobilize public pressure on governments and corporations to act in citizens’ interests.
- Implement environmental policies such as carbon taxes and national adaptation plans.
- Demand better practices from major historical emitters identified by the Carbon Majors Report.
- Integration with broader inequality policy:
- Mitigation and adaptation alone are not sufficient; tackling inequality also requires policymaking and reform of tax systems in conjunction with climate action.
- Urgency and trajectories:
- Current trajectory: not on track to limit atmospheric warming to 1.5 degrees by the end of this century; not on track to limit it to 3 degrees.
- According to current estimates we will reach 4 degrees warming by 2100.
- Call for immediate leadership: young activists cited as hope, but climate leaders are needed now.
Key statistics and figures (preserved exactly as in source)
- Life expectancy: Hong Kong 84 and Swaziland 49 years.
- Extreme poverty: dropped from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015.
- Undernourished in low-income countries: fell from 23 percent in 1990 to 13 percent in 2014.
- Worldwide primary school enrollment: has reached 90 percent.
- United States responsible for 26 percent of global cumulative greenhouse gases.
- Europe responsible for an additional 22 percent.
- Africa contributes just 3.8 percent.
- Lake Chad has shrunk 90 percent in the past 50 years.
- In Madagascar, over 70 percent of the population are rural farmers.
- World Bank prediction: there may be up to 140 million climate migrants by 2050.
- 84 percent of refugees are currently within low-income countries.
- People in poorer countries are roughly five times more likely to be displaced by weather events.
- Shanghai flood-defense project expected to cost £5 billion.
- Poll: 73 percent of Americans now believe that climate change is occurring; 72 percent said it was personally important to them.
- Over 70,000 people marched in Brussels in January.
- The 2017 Carbon Majors Report found that just 100 companies have produced over 70 percent of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.
- Current estimates: we will reach 4 degrees warming by 2100.
Lyndsay Walsh, "Address Global Inequality by Tackling Climate Change," F&D Magazine, December 2019.
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