Climate change hits the economy too, and harder in the South
admin September 17th, 2009
So now it’s official. The World Bank has spoken. Climate change is not just the cause of more extreme weather events, which hit developing countries disproportionately, it is also disproportionately damaging to them economically.
The World Development Report 2010, the Press edition of which has just been published, comments, “Warming of 2°C could result in a 4 to 5 percent permanent reduction in annual per capita consumption in Africa and South Asia, as opposed to minimal losses in high-income countries…It is estimated that developing countries will bear most of the costs of the damages—some 75–80 percent.”
And it is always worth reminding ourselves that the developing countries created – and continue to create – very little of the carbon emissions that are the source of global warming. In 2005 people in High Income countries emitted an average 15 tonnes of carbon each, whilst in the Low Income countries the average was nearer to 2 tonnes.
And the WDR goes on, “Warming can have a big impact on both the level and growth of gross domestic product (GDP), at least in poor countries. An examination of year- to- year variations in temperature (relative to a country’s average) shows that anomalously warm years reduce both the current level and subsequent growth rate of GDP in developing countries. Consecutive warm years might be expected to lead to adaptation, lessening the economic impacts of warming, yet the developing countries with more pronounced warming trends have had lower growth rates. Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa indicates that rainfall variability, projected to increase substantially, also reduces GDP and increases poverty.”
So we really should, along with everything else, be doing everything we can to boost GDP in the developing countries most at risk from the effects of climate change, many of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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