Climate change and poverty
Climate change and poverty are deeply intertwined because climate change disproportionally affects poor people in low-income communities and developing countries around the world. The impoverished have a higher chance of experiencing the ill-effects of climate change due to the increased exposure and vulnerability.[1] Vulnerability represents the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change including climate variability and extremes.[2]
Climate change highly exacerbates existing inequalities through its effects on health, the economy, and human rights. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth National Climate Assessment Report found that low-income individuals and communities are more exposed to environmental hazards and pollution and have a harder time recovering from the impacts of climate change.[3] For example, it takes longer for low-income communities to be rebuilt after natural disasters.[4] According to the United Nations Development Programme, developing countries suffer 99% of the casualties attributable to climate change.[5]
Different countries' impact on climate change also varies based on their stage of development; the 50 least developed countries of the world account for a 1% contribution to the worldwide emissions of greenhouse gasses, which are a byproduct of global warming.[5] Additionally, 92% of accumulated greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to countries from the Global North, which comprise 19% of the global population, while 8% of emissions are attributed to countries from the Global South, who bear the heaviest consequences of increasing global temperature.[6][7]
Climate and distributive justice questions are central to climate change policy options. Many policy tools can be employed to solve environmental problems such as cost-benefit analysis; however, such tools usually do not deal with such issues because they often ignore questions of just distribution and the environmental effects on human rights.
Security impacts[edit]
The concept of human security and the effects that climate change may have on it will become increasingly important as the affects become more apparent.[32] Some effects are already evident and will become very clear in the human and climatic short-run (2007–2020). They will increase and others will manifest themselves in the medium term (2021–2050); whilst in the long run (2051–2100), they will all be active and interacting strongly with other major trends.[32] There is the potential for the end of the petroleum economy for many producing and consuming nations, possible financial and economic crisis, a larger population of humans, and a much more urbanized humanity – far in excess of the 50% now living in small to very large cities.[33] All these processes will be accompanied by the redistribution of the population nationally and internationally.[33] Such redistributions typically have significant gender dimensions; for example, extreme event impacts can lead to male out migration in search of work, culminating in an increase in women-headed households – a group often considered particularly vulnerable.[34] Indeed, the effects of climate change on impoverished women and children is crucial in that women and children, in particular, have unequal human capabilities.[35] An example of a predicted trend called "The Great Migration" is estimated to affect millions of Americans in the year 2070. Due to the impacts of climate change millions will be forced to relocate. To accommodate TGM, the U.S. will need 25–30 million new housing units. Failure to build these new units will increase material deprivation and poverty.[36]
Infrastructure impacts[edit]
The potential effects of climate change and the security of infrastructure will have the most direct effect on the poverty cycle. Areas of infrastructure effects will include water systems, housing and settlements, transport networks, utilities, and industry.[37] Infrastructure designers can contribute in three areas for improving the living environment for the poor, in building design, in settlement planning and design as well as in urban planning.[37]
The National Research Council has identified five climate changes of particular importance to infrastructure and factors that should be taken into consideration when designing future structures. These factors include increases in very hot days and heat waves, increases in Arctic temperatures, rising sea levels, increases in intense precipitation events, and increases in hurricane intensity.[38] Heat waves affect communities that live in traditionally cooler areas because many of the homes are not equipped with air conditioning units.[26] Rising sea levels can be devastating for poor countries situated near the ocean and in delta regions, which experience increasingly overwhelming storm damage. In parts of eastern Caribbean nations, almost 60 percent of the homes were constructed without any building regulations.[26] Many of these endangered populations are also affected by an increase in flooding in locations that lack adequate drainage. In 1998, close to 200 million people were affected by flooding in China's Yangtze River Valley; and in 2010, flooding in Pakistan affected 20 million people.[26] These issues are made worse for people living in lower income areas and force them to relocate at a higher rate than other economic groups.[26]
In areas where poverty is prevalent and infrastructure is underdeveloped, climate change produces a critical threat to the future development of that country. Reports of a study done on ten geographically and economically diverse countries show how nine out of ten countries revealed an inability to develop infrastructures and its expensive maintenance due to the influence of climate change and cost.[39]
Proposed policy challenges[edit]
The main difficulties involved with climate change policy are the timetable of return on investment and the disparate costs on countries. To control the price of carbon, richer countries would have to make large loans to poorer countries, with the potential return on investment taking generations.[48]