Climate Injustice: the Global South
The climate crisis highlights the inequity and injustice that still exists in our world. The negative impacts of climate change, including crop failures, drinking water shortages, floods, and droughts systematically impact the global south, the countries that have done the least to cause the crisis, more than the global north. Yet, the global north has refused to stop burning fossil fuels with any urgency and has withheld funds they promised to the global south for climate mitigation and adaptation.
Read a roundup of the headlines below:
“Everyone knows that climate change is bad, right? But what do we mean when we say that it’s also unjust?
We mean that climate change didn’t just happen one day, coming down from the sky; nor is it a neutral and universal problem affecting everyone evenly across the globe…
To the contrary, different countries, industries, and businesses have different levels of responsibility for causing the climate crisis. So too, not everyone has to pay the costs of the climate crisis equally.
Some communities are disproportionately harmed by the climate crisis, even when they may have done the least to contribute to it in the first place. All too often, the communities forced to bear the highest costs for global climate change are also those who have already been the most deprived of resources, through historic and ongoing oppression.
In this way, white supremacy, racism, settler colonialism, and other forms of oppression and inequality all combine to make the climate crisis even more unfair.”
UUSC, What We Mean by “Climate Injustice”
“Western countries said they will spend about $25bn by 2025 to boost Africa’s efforts to adapt to climate change. Still, their pledges in Rotterdam fell short.
“It is a lot, of course, but it is derisory,” said Akufo-Addo, reminding that G20 countries “are responsible for 80 percent of [gas] emissions”.
For years, African leaders have said the continent is being to made to pay a heavy price by cutting off usage of fossil fuels, despite its low emissions compared with the rest of the world.
In June, just weeks after the G7 pledged to end public financing for foreign fossil-fuel projects by the end of 2022, Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum said the continent was “being punished”.
Africa emits just 2 to 3 percent of the world’s carbon emissions despite being home to nearly 17 percent of the world’s population.“
Al Jazeera, ‘Not fair’: Ghana slams West over low funding for climate change
“Climate reparations refer to a call for money to be paid by the Global North to the Global South as a means of addressing the historical contributions that the Global North has made (and continues to make) toward climate change. “It is important that the Global North own up to that responsibility of paying what they are due to the Global South,” says Nomhle Senene, a climate activist from South Africa organizing with Fridays for Future MAPA (“most affected people and areas”).
Indeed, countries in the Global North are responsible for 92% of excess global carbon emissions. Despite this, countless studies have shown that countries across the Global South are facing the sharpest end of the consequences when it comes to climate change—from severe heat waves in India to flooding in Kenya and hurricanes in Nicaragua.”
Yes Magazine, A Guide to Climate Reparations
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