The Equity Issue:

1. The Equity Issue: Considering the Cost of Inaction for Developing Countries

2. Climate Change is a Global Problem • The Impacts of climate change will be distributed unevenly • Countries differ in vulnerability, wealth, capacity, and resources • The costs of damages, adaptation and mitigation may be borne inequitably

3. Three types of costs: market impacts such as changes in farm output, public health expenditures, and property losses, and other cases where the effects of climate change have well-defined prices physical damages that have no prices attached, such as human deaths, extinctions of other species, and numerous forms of environmental damage “socially contingent,” i.e. dependent on how society responds to physical changes In all three areas of costs, the impact of climate change will be disproportionately bad for the countries that have had the least to do with adding carbon to the atmosphere In other words, developing countries stand to pay the most for climate change “Costs” of Climate Change

4. Sea Level Rise A sea level rise of 0.4 meters by 2080 • 200 million people living in areas subject to coastal flooding • Millions of environmental refugees, about 150 million by 2050 • Example: In Bangladesh, where half the population lives in areas less than five meters above sea level, a one percent increase in average global temperatures will cause a loss of 10 percent of all land area. With permanent flooding and shortages of drinking water, climate change could result in 30 to 40 million Bangladeshi refugees

5. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Global_Sea_Level_Rise_Risks_pnghttp://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Global_Sea_Level_Rise_Risks_png

6. Costs of immigration • Will fall on developed countries money in the form of humanitarian aid, higher prices for tropical products, and lower profits from businesses abroad • Will fall on environmental refugees emotionally.

7. Agriculture • Developing-country farmers will have much less ability to make agricultural adaptations than their rich-country counterparts • Climate change is worse for developing countries because they are in many cases located in warmer, more tropical areas • Lower agricultural yields in developing countries will also make it increasing difficult to meet UN Millennium Development Goals, like halving the share of people who suffer from hunger by 2015

8. Agriculture • Food production due to warmer temperatures may increase in the North • A question of equity and distribution will arise: almost all of the population growth will be in the global South, while food production will shift heavily toward the global North. • There is no guarantee that any increased food supply will be delivered to those in need.

9. Human Health • Countries that are already experiencing water-stressed conditions will grow rapidly in population, from 1.8 billion in 1990 to 5 billion by 2025 • Most of the current water-stressed areas are in the South • South has limited access to health care systems • Many communities in the South have little or no access to safe, clean drinking water because of a lack of water treatment, water delivery, and sanitation systems. • Warmer, wetter conditions promote the spread of both the mosquitoes that transmit malaria and the pathogens that cause the most serious forms of diarrhea in developing countries. Droughts will limit both diseases, but storms and floods will help them to spread.

10. Human Health • A calculated estimate by the World Health Organization suggests that in 2000, worldwide deaths attributable to climate change included at least 77,000 due to malnutrition, 47,000 due to diarrhea, 27,000 due to malaria, and 2,000 due to flooding • More deaths from malnutrition are also expected as temperatures begin to rise, due to the forecast of a decline in crop yields in the tropics • malnutrition, malaria, and diarrhea interact with each other, and with other diseases such as HIV-AIDS; people weakened by one disease are more likely to be harmed by another one.

11. Estimated Annual Losses (gains) if the event that C02 concentrations reach twice preindustrial levels (US billions of dollars) http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=192&ArticleID=2758

12. Natural disaster, environmental damage, poorly designed cities and climate change • Floods: In 1998 the Yangtze River in China burst its banks causing the worst floods in 50 years. It was caused partly by the loss of up to 80 per cent of trees in the river basin. • Two million people in Bangladesh had their homes flooded in 1999 as a result of deforestation in the Himalayas. • Forest fires: The health of 70 million may have been affected by the forest fires in Indonesia in 1997 which cast a pall of smoke over six South East Asian countries. Three million hectares of Brazil's forests in Roraima burnt in the same year. A similar area of forest was alight in Mongolia in 1996. Experts blame the fires on drought, deforestation and land clearance. • Earthquakes: Around 80 per cent of deaths from earthquakes are caused by collapsing buildings. Most of the 100,000 who died in the 1988 Armenian quake lived in cheap, concrete, buildings. • Deforestation: Forest clearance adds to droughts and desertification. Ethiopia's highlands, which have supported agriculture for millennia, have lost 90 per cent of their trees since 1990 making it hard to grow crops. An estimated 135 million people are in danger of becoming environmental refugees in Mali and Burkina Faso. Desertification as a result of deforestation and land clearance has forced an estimated one in six to leave the land. UNEP (2001) IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE TO COST THE WORLD $US 300 BILLION A YEAR http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=192&ArticleID=2758

13. Inaction Costs Developing Countries More • Decision-making related to climate change must take into account the unique characteristics of the "problem": large • Many developing countries are in relatively hot climates, depend more heavily on agriculture, and have less well developed infrastructure and social structures; thus, they may suffer more than average, perhaps much more. • EQUITY means "the quality of being impartial" or "something that is fair and just". The UNFCCC, including the references to equity and equitable in Articles 3.1, 4.2.a and 11.2 • Equity has two components: the distribution of the costs of damages or adaptation and of measures to mitigate climate change • Because countries differ substantially in vulnerability, wealth, capacity, resource endowments and other factors listed below, the costs of the damages, adaptation and mitigation may be borne inequitably, unless the distribution of these costs is addressed explicitly.

14. Bottomline : Developing countries require support from developed countries • Providing financial assistance requires approaches to international equity and cooperation • The Global Environment Facility (GEF) established in 1991 helps developing countries fund projects and programs that protect the global environment. • GEF grants support projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer, and persistent organic pollutants. • GEF is an independent financial organization that provides grants to developing countries for projects that benefit the global environment and promote sustainable livelihoods in local communities

15. Summary for Policymakers: The Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change –IPCC Working Group III http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sarsum3.htm • Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth Stanton, 2006 "The Cost of Inaction" Report to the Friends of Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland. http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/Climate-CostsofInaction.pdf