The Disproportionate Effects of Climate Change

Following up on my essay on the need for climate financing in emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs), I wanted to highlight a recently proposed solution, the Bridgetown Initiative, which addresses the risks of investing in EMDCs and why it is so vital to open up investment options to EMDCs as they are disproportionately affected by climate change. However, upon my research, it became apparent just how disproportionately EMDCs are affected by climate change, and I thought it’d be worthwhile to dive into this.

So, let's get into just how much climate change affects EMDCs, especially low-income countries, defined as the 74 lowest-income countries classified as EMDCs.

Poorly Developed Nations are at the Most Risk

The World Economic Forum illustrates the problem at hand perfectly:

1. The lowest-income countries produce one-tenth of emissions but are the most heavily impacted by climate change.

   
   

2. Vulnerable populations in these countries suffer damaging outcomes in terms of health, food and water, education, and more.

   
   

The stark reality is that climate change disproportionately affects low-income countries and EMDCs. The World bank reports that 74 lowest-income countries have experienced eight times as many natural disasters in the past 10 years versus the 1980s. Left unchecked, by 2050, the effects of these disasters could displace more than 200 million people and leave over 130 million in poverty. Climate change also affects various other areas, as seen by the infographic below.

Source

Health, Hunger, and Water Scarcity

WHO research suggests that 3.6 billion people currently live in areas highly susceptible to climate change and the effects observed in the figure above. From undernutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress alone, some estimates expect an additional 250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 to 2050 due to climate change.

Climate change is expected to not only increase the risk of various diseases in low-income countries, but also exacerbate the lack of access to healthcare already observed. Studies have suggested that a warming of 2-3°C on a global scale could increase the number of people at risk of malaria by 5%, or more than 150 million people. Additionally, diseases like diarrhea would be more prevalent, with a projection of 48,000 additional deaths among children below the age of 15 by 2030. Furthermore, temperature and precipitation changes due to climate change are expected to enhance the spread of vector-borne diseases like malaria. Without action, deaths from such diseases could rise well above the current figure of 700,000 annually. Currently, WHO data estimates that two billion people lack safe drinking water and an additional 600 million suffer from foodborne illnesses annually. Climate change is expected to heighten the stressors that cause foodborne and waterborne illnesses.

Climate change is also expected to increase rates of hunger, which affected 770 million people, primarily in Africa and Asia, in 2020. A study that aimed to project the probability of rice, soybean, maize, and wheat yield failures demonstrated a possibly grim future if no changes were made to support agriculture in low-income countries. The probability of crop failures is projected to be 4.5 times higher in 2030 than in 2021 when the study was conducted and up to 25 times higher by 2050 globally. Lower access to food also results in higher prices, with one estimate predicting food prices to increase by 12% in sub-Saharan Africa. The study also suggests these figures are much higher when accounting for the possibility of extreme water scarcity.

A 2021 report by the World Meteorological Organization, assessed the effect a 2-3°C temperature change would have on water scarcity due to changing drought patterns, increased evaporation, and a range of other factors. The study found that by 2025, there could be up to five billion people on the planet affected by water scarcity, up from the 1.7 billion observed in 2021.

These changes resulting from climate change also go on to negatively affect many other aspects of quality of life.

Childhood Development, Education, and Emigration

Education is also under threat from climate change. The Young Lives study, conducted by researchers at Oxford University, has followed 12,000 children in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam since 2001 to understand just how deeply poverty affects the development of children. Surprisingly, the climate crisis intersects with widening inequalities and interrupted education. Overall, the long-term study revealed that childhood exposure to climate shocks, like droughts and floods, has a clear long-term impact on vulnerable children and young people. These results shocked me and are directly correlated to the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, which will only increase as climate change progresses.

The study first proves that children living in poor households are significantly more exposed to extreme weather events, with the greatest disparity existing in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, “81% of children in our poorest households experienced at least one extreme weather event, compared to only 22% in the least poor households.” These shocks affect the growing bodies and minds of children as early as conception. Extreme climate events negatively affect crop yields, as explored earlier, and thus malnutrition becomes rampant. In their Ethiopian studies, the Young Lives study demonstrated how extreme weather events eventually resulted in negative impacts on “important cognitive skills, such as vocabulary and basic mathematics, especially for children whose parents received little or no education.” In India, when studying the effects of droughts, floods, or cyclones experienced by a pregnant mother, evidence showed negative effects not only on the child’s vocabulary development but also longer-term effects on “basic maths and socio-emotional skills such as self-esteem, self-efficacy and agency, [that] manifest even into adolescence.”

These climate shocks also reduce household income. In Vietnam, this study demonstrated that reduced household income due to climate shocks directly impacts the time of schooling that children receive. As explored in a previous post, much of the economies of underdeveloped nations are agrarian based and this is even more commonplace in poorer households. Poverty is the most important factor determining whether girls are sent to school. In low-income countries, families are more likely to send a boy to school over a girl and as a result, 15 million girls will never get the chance to attend school compared to 10 million boys. Climate change will only exaggerate this impact as crop yields decrease, water becomes more scarce, and extreme weather events become more common.

All these environmental changes are also expected to affect the volume of migrants seeking refuge. The World Bank Groundswell report projects that 216 million people in six regions could move by 2050 due to the effects of climate change. Again, factors this is attributed to include water stress, drops in crop productivity, but also rising sea levels, and poor regenerative farming practices. The top three regions where this migration is expected to be observed are sub-Saharan Africa (86 million), East Asia and the Pacific (49 million), and South Asia (40 million).

EMDCs are at a high risk of facing negative consequences of climate change disproportionate to developed countries. The high rates of poverty, low food and water security, and access to healthcare and education are already extremely worrying as is. If there is one thing we take away from this piece, it is that financing must be brought to EMDCs to not only save the environment but also to save lives.

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Link to the original post: https://kadengulamani.substack.com/p/the-disproportionate-effects-of-climate