Wealthy countries often make the argument that as the entire planet is coming under climate change threats, the whole of humanity must equally shoulder the burden of fighting climate change. This argument ignores three brutal facts. First, a handful of developed economies have contributed the lion’s share to actual and projected warming. According to the figure below from New York Times, wealthy countries (including the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Western Europe) account for just 12% of the global population today but are responsible for 50% of all the accumulated greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and warming since the Industrial Revolution.
Second, per capita GHG emissions are closely linked to a country’s level of economic development, and thus the standard of living. Wealthy countries owe their current prosperity to years of historical emissions and they continue to emit more to sustain this growth. Developing countries have only recently begun to industrialize and their per capita emissions are still low. The figure below shows how different countries stand in their Human Development Index and the corresponding per capita energy consumption. For example, China’s per-capita energy consumption is about one-seventh that of the US or Canada. High per capita GHG emissions in developed countries are the inevitable outcome of energy-intensive production and consumption.
Third, even though low-income countries have contributed very little to GHG emissions, they would bear the brunt of the adverse impacts of warming. This is because these countries tend to be situated in the most environmentally vulnerable regions of the world. Hence, climate change is not only an environmental issue, but also the biggest survival and development challenge for low-income countries.
Because the bulk of the historically accumulated emissions are from the developed world, we must first demand that it reduce emissions drastically and also help developing countries adapt to climate change. Developed countries’ GHG emissions have already made our climate unstable and it is a debt they owe to the rest of the world. They must reduce emission so that the rest of the world can survive and grow.
Furthermore, under climate change threats, the survival of many of the poorest countries depend on their further development. Climate disasters such as droughts, floods, famines, and health crises can be devastating for these countries. Individuals and communities have little material reserves to rebuild. Responding to these disasters are diverting significant government resources away from development and poverty alleviation. Yet, these disasters are the result of the historically accumulated warming, of which the developed countries are accountable for.
Economic development and poverty alleviation are key measures for developing countries to protect themselves from the brunt of climate change. Their concerns about economic growth and poverty alleviation are legitimate and must be fully respected in any global climate agreement.
According to the National Public Radio (NPR), at the 2021 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley wanted richer countries to stop throwing garbage in her yard and then telling her to clean it up. The garbage, in this case, is GHG. “It is unjust and it is immoral,” Mottley added. Raeed Ali, a climate activist from Fiji, said, “Providing finance for loss and damage is the very least that wealthy countries can and should do…But to do this, they will have to acknowledge that they are responsible for this. And I think that is something they are not willing to do.”
Developing countries are asking the developed world to contribute to help them adapt to climate change. At the 2009 UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, wealthy countries made a pledge of US$100 billion a year to less wealthy countries by 2020, to help them adapt to climate change and mitigate further rises in temperature.
But wealthy countries have yet to make good on this 2009 pledge. The figure below, from an article in Nature and is based on data from Oxfam (a worldwide hunger-relief organization), shows that actions from wealthy countries have fallen far short of their promises. For example, depending on whether the calculation takes into account of wealth, pass emissions, or population, US should contribute 40–47% of the $100 billion. But its 2018 contribution was only around $6.6 billion, with more than 50% in loans. Japan and France, on the other hand, have contributed more than their fair shares, but almost all of their funding came as loans, not grants. A flurry of pledges just before 2021 Glasgow Climate Summit have led to hopes that, by 2022, wealthy countries will manage to transfer $100 billion annually.
