Ensure climate justice

In a campaign being staged at the ongoing UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland poorer countries are pressurizing their wealthier counterparts at the UN climate summit to pay up for the damage being caused by global warming. Poorer, who are minimally responsible for climate change are pointing to increasing powerful storms, cyclones, droughts and floods afflicting their people. We support their demand as less developed countries have been struggling to access some $100 billion pledged by world powers years ago. According to an agency report published in this newspaper on Wednesday the previously promised funds were offered in recognition that poorer countries are least responsible for climate change. However rich countries have not delivered on that pledge, a failure that could undermine the COP26 climate summit.

The irony lies in the fact that the largest polluters on the planet are also those who suffer the least from the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. When we look at the causes of the global climate crisis–and it indeed is a crisis of a very serious nature– most of them can be attributed to the richest countries. In fact, of the ten largest emitters of carbon dioxide, seven are rich countries, mostly located in West Europe and North America. On the contrary, the poorest countries, those who have contributed the least to global warming, are those who will suffer the most.

Observers have pointed out that the phenomenon of global warming is deeply unfair. Indeed, researchers have measured the vulnerability to global warming in different regions of the world. They found that warming will have more consequences in some areas than in others. The regions that are already hot, for example, will find it more difficult to cope with global warming. The more fragile tropical areas will also suffer more damage. On the other hand, the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere will not face such hard challenges. The problem here should be obvious. These hot tropical zones are also those with poorer countries that pollute less than Europe or the United States.

This climate injustice must not continue. The global readers agree. “Common but differentiated responsibility” was the catchphrase in Kyoto Protocol and then again in the Paris Agreement. Indeed, every single country is responsible should play its part in the fight against global warming. However, those who have contributed the most to the problem must contribute with more means to the cause. It is unfortunate that this principle has proven to be very difficult to implement. Green Fund, a financial mechanism under the UNFCCC was intended to finance the ecological transition in poor countries. Yet, progress has been very slow in this regard.

Those involved in negotiations of behalf of developing nations are insisting using the term “loss and damage” in the official text of the summit agreement. This is facing opposition from the developed countries. The latter are apparently worried about the potential financial costs and legal implications.

The attitude shown by the developed countries does not paint an optimistic picture. The report suggests that they are not prepared to consider a loss and damage fund separate from funding for mitigation and adaptation. The head of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development have pooh pooched the idea as being ‘premature’.

According to the report economists now estimate the costs of damage from climate change-related weather events could be around $400 billion per year by 2030. A study commissioned by development agency Christian Aid, meanwhile, estimated that climate damage could cost vulnerable countries a fifth of their gross domestic product by 2050. It’s clear that global emissions need to be cut to avoid dangerous levels of climate change. But for many, the bedrock of climate justice is the need for fairness in who cuts which emissions, taking into account both historical and present circumstances.

Climate change is not only an environmental problem: it interacts with social systems, privileges and embedded injustices, and affects people of different spheres of life. The climate solutions proposed by climate justice advocates aim to address long-standing systemic injustices. The harmful effects of climate injustice are clear to us. We see it in the distressing stories of lives destroyed, epic droughts, floods and typhoons, and families and whole peoples uprooted. And more often than not it is people in the poorer countries who are the most vulnerable.