Addressing Poverty as a Climate Change Adoption Strategy

The Earth is experiencing the warmest surface temperatures since modern climate measurements were implemented in 1880. This extreme global warming is the result of excessive concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Moreover, overwhelming scientific evidence has concluded that climate change has been caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and if these are not substantially reduced, the devastating effects that it will have for future centuries will be irreversible.

Although developed countries have released most of the greenhouse gases that have caused climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has stated in its book entitled “Climate Change: Impacts, Vulnerabilities and Adaptation in Developing Countries in 2007 that, over the next decades, “… billions of people, particularly those in developing counties, [will] face shortages of water and food and greater risks to health and life as a result of climate change”. Consequently, global action should be focused on providing developing countries, and especially their most disadvantageous poverty-stricken sections and minority groups, who are the most vulnerable social groups in them, the necessary resources to adapt to the new climatic conditions that will arise from climate change.

Vulnerabilities of these extremely poverty-stricken sections and minority groups in developing countries are aggravated by discrimination and social exclusion that prevent them from acquiring the necessary resources to cope with global warming on their own. Adaptation strategies that are implemented need to acknowledge the circumstances of these groups to the extent of their vulnerabilities to climate change.

Poverty and Climate Change

Even though developing countries have less responsibility than developed countries for   causing   anthropogenic   climate   change,   they   are   the most vulnerable to its effects. In fact, 95% of fatalities from global natural disasters have been suffered by developing countries in the last 25 years, fiercely striking their poverty-stricken sections and minority groups, according to Peter Höppe in Global Economic Symposium 2011.

Of the developing countries in the world, the populations from Africa, South Asia and Latin America are the most threatened by the consequences of climate change, due to the extreme poverty, social inequality and discrimination that exist in them. According to the GINI coefficient (2013), a statistical index used to measure income inequality, of the 40 countries with the highest rate of inequality, 93% belong to Africa (43%) and Latin America (45.70) and in South Asia the extreme poverty was estimated at 15.1%. In consequence, though developing countries of Africa, Latin America and South Asia are mostly exposed to the extreme weather events and altered climatic conditions, they are the least prepared to handle them.

The region of Africa is highly exposed to the effects of climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, “The population at risk of increased water stress in Africa is projected to be between 75-250 million and 350-600 million people by the 2020s and 2050s, respectively”. It is projected furthermore that temperatures in Africa will rise faster than the global average during the 21st Century. Meanwhile, the great ecosystem diversity in Latin America and the Caribbean is subject to a large variety of climate change vulnerabilities along the continent. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, “in 2010, 98 of the world’s most serious natural disasters occurred in Latin America, and 79 of these were climate-related. They caused more than 300,000 deaths and losses valued at 49.4 billion US dollars, and affected 13.8 million people.” All together, the destruction that flooding could wreak in South Asia’s low-lying and urban areas is cruelly complemented by the effects of drought and changes in seasonal rainfall. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report predicts that in forthcoming decades, “the impacts of climate change will influence flooding of settlements and infrastructure, heat-related deaths, and food and water shortages in South Asia”. Further, the extreme weather events and altered climatic conditions are exacerbating the poverty level in developing countries. According to the World Bank in 2015, “…as the impacts of climate change worsen, it will become harder to eliminate poverty. That leaves a narrow window for ending extreme poverty and putting in place the safety nets that can keep poverty at bay while countries also work to lower their emissions toward net zero.”

Climate Change Adaptation in Developing Countries

According to the UNFCCC, the effects of climate change are already unavoidable, notwithstanding the efforts taken by the international community to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere. To combat global warming, it is no longer enough to focus on the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Global warming will alter the patterns of weather and generate new climatic conditions that societies will have to adapt to. Action must therefore be centered on generating adaptation strategies for countries to adjust to climate change’s negative effects.

With the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015 – a legally binding, landmark treaty on global warming, although is not yet in force, climate change adaptation has been given a greater relevance than ever before as one of the three main goals of the global action against climate change, and so, it is of paramount importance to understand how these adaptation strategies can be designed and implemented in order to help developing countries and their minority groups to manage global warming. Article 2(b) of the Agreement gives emphasis on increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience besides limiting global temperature and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, particularly those adaptation efforts of developing countries that are most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. The Agreement did identify the basic requirements of all adaptation strategies, namely, to structure them upon the specific circumstances of each country, guided by the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities, promoting the full participation of minority groups, and addressing the social and economic vulnerabilities that affect its population [Article 7(5)]. Addressing social inequalities and exclusions that aggravate poverty is crucial to any adaptation strategy, because they will not deliver results if the social groups that need them are illiterate, poor, hungry and diseased, and cannot use them; or if the aid does not reach them because of the corruption of their governments and the fragility of their institutions.

Poverty and Climate Finance

Responding to the climate challenge requires collective action from all countries. Although developing country Parties, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, have made efforts to adapt to the new climatic conditions on their own, their efforts will not be sufficient if they do not receive financial and technological support from the international community because they do not have the financial and technological resources, nor the necessary infrastructure and institutions to adapt to the global change.

Climate finance has been a central element of the international climate change agreements from the beginning. The UNFCCC, agreed in 1992, stated that developed countries shall provide “new and additional financial resources” to developing countries. The Convention and the Protocol therefore foresee financial assistance from Parties with more resources to those less endowed and more vulnerable.This commitment was further reinforced in the Cancun Agreements in 2010 where the Green Climate Fund (GCF) was established to act as a key mechanism to deliver large scale financial resources to developing countries. 

Most recently in the Paris Agreement in 2015 the issue of climate finance was further postulated. Article 9 of the Agreement ascertains developed countries responsibilities in climate change adoption including financial resources to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation in continuation of their existing obligations under the Convention, to take the lead in mobilizing climate finance from a wide variety of sources, instruments and channels. Article 2(c) sets a goal of the Agreement to make finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate resilient development. Article 7(2)of the Agreement recognizes a contribution to the long-term global response to climate change to protect people, livelihoods and ecosystems, taking into account the urgent and immediate needs of those developing country Parties that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.  Article 7(6) recognizes the importance of support for and international cooperation on adaptation efforts and the importance of taking into account the needs of developing country Parties, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

The GCF, together with the Global Environment Facility (GEF), under Article 11 of the Paris Agreement, was given an important role in serving the Agreement as operating entities of the Financial  Mechanism and as such represent the main channels through which  future sources of international climate finance are  expected to flow in the years to come. The Financial Mechanism was established with a view to reinforcing and streamlining efforts to provide concessional financial resources to developing country Parties.

It is widely claimed that the objective of the GCF is to raise $100 billion per year in climate financing by 2020. This is not an official figure, however, and disputes remain as to whether the funding target will be based on public sources, or whether leveraged private finance will be counted towards the total. As of July 2017, the GCF has raised USD 10.3 billion equivalent in pledges from 43 state governments, according to GCF’s resource mobilization statistics. A major new report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate calls on governments and finance institutions to scale up and shift investment for sustainable infrastructure since the report estimates investments totaling about US$90 trillion will be needed in infrastructure over the next 15 years as a fundamental strategy to spur growth. The model of “micro-scrutiny” of paperwork used by the GCF has been argued as ineffective and inappropriate since this process slowed the GCF’s project allocations.

While the broad agreement on the international climate finance to be provided to developing country Parties has been reached, the debate is now focused on the fine detail of how to deliver this. In particular, how this figure should be raised, what financing should classify, and how should it be distributed.

Discrimination of Minority Groups in Developing Countries and Climate Change

Among the social groups that inhabit developing countries, minorities like indigenous people and ethnic communities are the most vulnerable victims of global warming, not just because of the exposed ecosystems they inhabit and the close relationship they maintain with nature but their vulnerabilities to the consequences of climate change are clearly rooted in their conditions of poverty, discrimination and social exclusion. As a result, climate change adaption strategies that are being designed and implemented are not taking minorities in consideration, and are in effect leaving them on their own to survive (or not) global warming.

Any climate change adaptation strategy that is designed and implemented in developing countries has to contemplate transversal measures that address the social exclusions and inequalities of their minorities, because they are the ones with the fewest resources to cope with global warming and the most likely to suffer its effects in a life-threatening way. To protect minority groups and guarantee their existence, it is important that the social inequalities in which they live be addressed, because adaptation strategies have to be aimed at providing these vulnerable groups with the necessary resources for them to cope with climate change on their own.

Reducing Social Inequalities as a Climate Change Adaptation Strategy

According to the Paris Agreement, the essential goal of climate change adaptation is the protection of people and their livelihoods and ecosystems, especially the vulnerable groups, like minorities, that inhabit developing countries (Article 2). Adaptation techniques implemented in developing countries that are focused in protecting economic sectors are not enough because they do not address the social inequalities that are the essence of their climate change vulnerabilities. In consequence, transversal adaptation strategies that combine technology and financial transfer with structural reforms in the social fabric of the society can be more effective in managing global warming in the long-term. In addition, it is important that the adaptation strategies include mechanisms that enable vulnerable social groups to participate in their elaboration, implementation and accountability. By doing this, the strategies will be benefited from the unique local knowledge of the inhabitants of the ecosystems, and the vulnerable social groups will feel part of the action plans, collaborate proactively and benefit from them.

On the other hand, if communities are not involved in the elaboration and implementation of adaptation strategies, they will perceive them as an intervention from the government, and will not contribute proactively to them.

Conclusion

The magnitude of the consequences that climate change will have on the world is still relatively unknown. Nevertheless, it has already altered global climatic conditions and caused devastating effects on all countries and their populations, particularly those that are most vulnerable to such effects. The promotion of climate change adaptation is, thus, an urgent matter. For such promotion to lead to effective action, governments have to acknowledge the fact that only by addressing socially, economically and politically enabling policy framework that combines climate actions and the needs of vulnerable social groups their populations will be capable of successfully managing climate change and adapting to it. Adaptation strategies can be sectoral – aimed at specific affected areas, multi-sectoral – when the affected natural resources cover different areas and transversal – with the objective of introducing structural changes to the existing social fabric for it to be better capable of coping with global warming. The international community needs to broaden their view of the problem and possible solutions. If this does not happen, climate change will continue to accentuate the already disproportionate vulnerabilities of poverty-stricken people and minority groups in developing countries, and its consequences will be catastrophic to humanity.

Mahmudul Hasan
Mahmudul Hasan
Mahmudul Hasan is a recent LL.M. graduate of energy and environmental law and Thomas Buergenthal Fellow at The George Washington University Law School, Washington, D.C.