Climate Apartheid
The climate and ecological crises highlights and deepens the inequity between the global north and the global south. Internally, within countries, inequities between the rich and the poor will also be highlighted.
Wealthy people and big corporations can easily relocate and escape to more habitable areas while the poor are forced to adapt, stay in dangerous situations, or be displaced as climate refugees. The wealthy will also have access to air conditioning and other amenities that much of the global population will not have access to.
Read a roundup of the headlines:
“If our global climate change catastrophe continues unchecked, vast swaths of the world will likely become harsher and far less hospitable for humanity.
When that happens, an even greater rift will appear between the global haves and have-nots, as many people will be left without the means to escape the worst effects of the climate crisis, according to a new report published Tuesday by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council that describes an impending "climate apartheid."
Futurism, "Climate Apartheid" Is Imminent. Only the Rich Will Survive.
“The world is increasingly at risk of “climate apartheid”, where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said.
Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law.
Alston is critical of the “patently inadequate” steps taken by the UN itself, countries, NGOs and businesses, saying they are “entirely disproportionate to the urgency and magnitude of the threat”. His report to the UN human rights council (HRC) concludes: “Human rights might not survive the coming upheaval.”
The Guardian, ‘Climate apartheid’: UN expert says human rights may not survive
“Climate impacts are felt globally, but wherever we are, our ability to cope depends on what is in our purse. The wealthy have funds or insurance to cover a quick retreat to safety, temporary accommodation, and rebuilding or relocation costs. But the poor may not be able to evacuate, may not have reliable access to food, water, housing or energy, and insurance may be unavailable or unaffordable. They may also have been victims of discriminatory state and corporate policies that disproportionately exposed them to risks that could have been better managed. Many factors beyond our control – our gender, age, economic status and location – all influence our ability to respond.
While those most responsible for climate change are relatively insulated from its impacts, those least responsible are stripped of basic freedoms and dignity. They have to survive ever greater adversities with increasingly limited resources…Research by Oxfam shows that the world’s richest 10% of people cause 50% of emissions.”
Greenpeace, Climate change affects rich and poor unequally. Climate justice redresses the balance
“Rich countries must urgently develop a plan to assist countries suffering the ravages of extreme weather, as failure to take early action on the climate crisis has left them increasingly vulnerable, developing nations have said.
The V20 – made up of the 20 vulnerable countries facing the worst impacts of the climate crisis, and least able to cope with them – set out its proposals on Monday for how rich countries should pay for the “loss and damage” caused by the climate crisis.
Its demands are likely to be a key issue at the Cop27 UN climate summit, which starts in Egypt on 6 November. Loss and damage refers to the most disastrous impacts of climate breakdown, such as hurricanes or severe floods like those that recently hit Pakistan.”
The Guardian, Rich countries must urgently help poor nations hit by climate crisis, says V20
“A new Stanford University study shows global warming has increased economic inequality since the 1960s. Temperature changes caused by growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere have enriched cool countries like Norway and Sweden, while dragging down economic growth in warm countries such as India and Nigeria.
“Our results show that most of the poorest countries on Earth are considerably poorer than they would have been without global warming,” said climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, lead author of the study published April 22 in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “At the same time, the majority of rich countries are richer than they would have been.’”
Stanford Earth Matters magazine, Climate change has worsened global economic inequality
“The challenge of climate mitigation is made more difficult by high rates of energy use in wealthy countries, mostly in the Global North, which far exceed what is required to meet human needs. In contrast, more than 3 billion people in poorer countries live in energy poverty. A just transition requires energy convergence—reducing energy use in wealthy countries to achieve rapid emissions reductions, and ensuring sufficient energy for development in the rest of the world.
However, existing climate mitigation scenarios reviewed by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change do not explore such a transition. On average, existing scenarios maintain the Global North's energy privilege at a per capita level 2·3 times higher than in the Global South. Even the more equitable scenarios perpetuate large energy inequalities for the rest of the century. To reconcile the Global North's high energy use with the Paris Agreement targets, most scenarios rely heavily on bioenergy-based negative emissions technologies. This approach is risky, but it is also unjust. These scenarios tend to appropriate land in the Global South to maintain, and further increase, the Global North's energy privilege. There is an urgent need to develop scenarios that represent convergence to levels of energy that are sufficient for human wellbeing and compatible with rapid decarbonisation.”
The Lancet, Existing climate mitigation scenarios perpetuate colonial inequalities