Hunger, Poverty, And Climate Change: How Climate Crisis Amplify Social Inequality And Undermine The Efforts Of Poverty Eradication In Developing Nations

The climate change's effects are universal, and their global reach is undeniable. It's reported that the recent global economic growth has lifted millions from extreme poverty and narrowed the gap between nations.

However, the unchecked climate crisis poses a grave threat, risking a reversal of these gains and undermining global efforts to eradicate poverty. Though climate change impacts everyone, its projected effects differ significantly across countries. In the poorest economies, a large portion of the population relies directly for their survival on resources provided by nature such as agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. As they're more exposed and vulnerable, they ultimately suffer devastating consequences for health, food and water security, education, and more.

The climate crisis is a deeply unfair one, since the lowest income countries produce only one-tenth of the global greenhouse gas emissions. However, they are the most heavily impacted to bear the greatest burden in terms of loss of life and relative effect on investment and the economy.

Today, greenhouse gas emissions are majorly linked to a nation's wealth, and have increased from a negligible level some 50 years ago to more than 40 billion tons a year.

The richest countries represent only 16 percent of the world population but almost 40 percent of CO2 emissions. This cross-country inequality is rooted in history for a longer period of time. For example, the United States, European Union, and China alone have a combined contribution of 60 percent of the world's total CO2 emissions.

The effort to reduce emissions must be at the service of broader objectives of socioeconomic development, such as inequality and poverty eradication, jobs creation, and improvement of public health and standard of living.

The Climate Crisis

The effects of global warming are a nonlinear, as an increase in temperature of only half degree Celsius would have doubled its impact. Meaning, if a temperature of 1.5 °C would expose 245 million people to a water shortage, at +2 °C, the figures become 490 million.

Poorest populations mostly do not benefit from insurance mechanisms or have access to basic health services, consequently becoming more vulnerable to any shock hitting their assets and income streams. By hitting them the hardest, climate change risks both increasing existing economic inequalities and causing more people to fall into poverty.

Social Inequality

Inequality refers to differences in income or wealth across the whole range of social distribution, while Poverty concerns individuals below a given income threshold, or lacking access to basic needs.

Hunger and Poverty

Worldwide, gradual changes in long-term climate trends or more frequent and severe natural disasters can probably lead to reduced agricultural productivity and increased poverty, causing changes in food production, higher consumption prices and changes in rural incomes. The evidence is mounting, as the World Bank reported that by 2030, between 68 and 135 million people could further be pushed into poverty as a result of climate change.

In the same vein, the probability of crop yield failures is projected to be 4.5 times higher by 2030, (and 25 times higher by 2050). Invariably, the food prices would also be very much higher as well, with an average of 12% in sub-Saharan Africa.

Livelihood And Productivity

The economic downturns brought on by decimated crops through counter-productive means will have a consequential impact on many families for survival. For instance, many families will end up pulling their children out of school to save on fees and/or putting them to work to make up for lost income.

In terms of productivity, climate induced heat can restrict a worker’s physical functions and capabilities during their working hours. Globally, heat stress is projected to reduce total working hours by 2.2% and global GDP by $2.4 billion in 2030.

Universal Health Coverage (UHC)

The effects of climate change could affect the quality of human health and service delivery in various ways. The existing burden of various disease could become compounded, as well as exacerbating existing barriers to accessing quality health services.

By 2030, for instance, it is predicted that there might be beyond 150 million additional cases of malaria worldwide resulting from increased temperatures of 2-3°C. Diarrheal diseases would also increasingly become more common due to increased clean water scarcity and about 50,000 more diarrhea-related deaths in adolescent children aged 15 and below.

Forced Migration

Climate change appeared to be a powerful driver of internal migration due to its impacts on livelihoods and loss of income. In the last decade, the occurrence of natural disasters in poor countries have exponentially increased up to eight times compared to the past 50 years (during the 1980s).

By 2050, climate induced displacement and migration is statistically estimated to hit almost 90 million refugees in sub-Saharan Africa, 50 million in East Asia and the Pacific, and 40 million from the South Asia; with over 220 million refugees worldwide, if the climate crisis continually remains unchecked. It could also force up to 140 million people into poverty, and unravelling decades of hard-won mitigation achievements.

Existing Solutions

Tackling climate change and reducing inequality requires joint efforts and paying attention to the intricate links between the existing challenges. As these issues are deeply intertwined with global trends, the following measures may be impactful:

1. Mitigation efforts should be shared fairly to ensure they serve the broader objectives of development such as poverty eradication, reducing inequality, and improvement of the quality of living.

2. Policy design should be emphasized as a key to making sure climate policies do not hurt the poorest countries.

3. Financial transfers between countries should be promoted to reduce the burden of mitigation for poorer countries and increase participation in mitigation efforts.

4. Plans for the revenues generated by carbon prices must be redistributed to offset the negative impacts on poor countries, as well as leading to net benefits for them.

5. Creation of adaptation funds that would ensure technological transfers from rich countries to poorer ones, since they produce most patents.

Conclusion

It's understandable that ending poverty and fighting climate change cannot be done in isolation, and could be achieved more easily if tackled together. Speeding up of structural transformation of rural economies is critical in this regard; coupled with other important policy measures such as skills development, enabling environment for sustainable enterprises, public investment in infrastructure, and improved integration of developing countries into global trade.

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