Deep Divisions - Climate Change and Inequality

Do you ever notice those people who sleep on the roadside, who live on the streets with their whole family, including kids and elderly? Or maybe pondered over the existence of that slum area right next to a posh residential complex, coexisting in a metro city? Or that big corporation, whose labor union protests against salary cuts ever so often while their executives enjoy fat bonuses every Diwali? What about farmer suicides, daily wagers suicides, or similar news from extreme poverty-stricken regions that we read in our morning newspaper with a cup of tea?

No matter where we live, we don't really have to look very far to realize that we live in a very unequal and unjust society. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, along with rise in economic growth, came a consistent rise in inequality across the world. We have unequal access to opportunities, unequal income, unequal wealth, resulting in unequal standards of living and consumption. I can't help but wonder how this happened, how the benefits of growth got distributed so unequally among one human species!

And now, to make things worse, we have climate change. The idea that climate change is somehow linked to inequality didn't come as a shock to me. While studying the human impact on climate and the environment, I started to get this feeling that the same social, economic, and political forces that are responsible for environmental damage are also contributing to the exploitation of the poor. And the literature just proved me right. 

It turns out both climate change and inequality are linked inextricably on multiple levels. Right from what causes these both problems, to how inequality plays in causing climate change and lastly how climate change affects people unequally and thereby increasing this inequality, the interconnection between these two issues is staggering.

What is inequality? How did this happen?

Inequality is basically the unequal distribution of economic resources such as income, wealth, and job opportunities. This is facilitated by various demographic factors such as nationality, class, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, etc. In which country a person is born can determine his future aspects, so can his parents' economic status and ethnicity. Social discrimination based on race, gender, caste, religion, etc also affects access to opportunities and hence the ability to generate wealth for themselves.

A little bit of inequality is normal, in fact desired. According to one study, when people were asked what is their ideal distribution of wealth, no one said it should be completely equal. I mean no one wants someone who is not working at all to enjoy the same benefits as compared to someone who works hard in a demanding job. You'd want them to be paid fairly, not equally.

But that's where the problem is, people in power do not fairly compensate the poor people for their effort. To reduce costs, cutting labor wages is a common practice among big corporations. In 1980, a cocoa farmer used to get 18% value of a chocolate bar, now they receive just 6%. In the US, in the last 30 years, the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50% has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1% have grown 300%. That is simply unfair! 

Two kinds of inequality - Within the country and Across countries

When we talk about inequality, there can be primarily two kinds of economic inequality, within a country and across multiple countries. 

Across countries, inequality can be judge by the country's GDP and GDP per capita figures, which is total income divided by the total population. As you can see from the heat map below, most of the temperate, cool countries such as in the global north have high GDP and GDP per capita figures while a lot of tropical countries in the global south are developing and have lesser GDP. Why am I dragging the weather here? You'll see that soon. Though rising productivity and economic growth in populous countries such as India and China are causing this type of inequality to decrease, still a lot of African countries are far behind in the race.

Within country economic inequality is represented by the Gini index, a statistical dispersion of income levels across the population of a particular region. A Gini index of zero means perfect equality, equal income for all whereas one means total inequality, ie. one person earning all the money. Most African countries have the worst inequality, Gini index between 0.5-0.6 while most Nordic countries have some of the lowest Gini indices, between 0.2-0.3. India had a Gini index of 0.35, calculated back in 2011, while the US had a Gini index of 0.41 in 2016. If we take the world's whole population, the Gini index is 0.65 (2013). 

Today, 71 percent of the world’s population live in countries where inequality is growing. Within country, inequality is especially important, because these are the inequalities that people encounter every day in their lives, and witness in the world around them. This is how they stack up and compare themselves with their neighbors, family members, and society. If this inequality rises, people lose their trust in government, resulting in crimes, social unrest, and conflicts.

Role of inequality in causing climate change

Both of the inequalities discussed above play their unique role in causing climate change. There exists a strong correlation between wealth, energy consumption, and CO₂ emissions. I believe it’s not very hard to guess that rich people consume more stuff and energy in electricity and transport than poor people. But do you know how skewed this proportion is? Look at the image below, you'll realize the extent of this disparity - 

The emission of the richest 10% is equal to the rest of 90% of the world. And the emission of the richest 1% is almost double of the poorest 50 % of the world. That's half of the world! Wait till you see how that poorest 50 % are bearing the most adverse impacts of climate change, something they have no role in causing!

Moreover, inequalities in consumption patterns encourage the formation of carbon-intensive habits. One of the key drivers of consumption is this compulsion to follow socially valued behavior of consuming more, and this social mimicry results in an increase in carbon emission as more people adopt substantial consumerism. In highly unequal societies, political power is disproportionately controlled by the economically rich, which paves a path for a dangerously carbon-intensive future.

Across countries, inequality is also something worth looking at. The following chart is of cumulative emissions, meaning who has emitted how much CO₂ so far - 

Okay, so the USA and Europe are major contributors to the existing warming. What about now? Who is emitting how much, now? 

China has joined the race now and India is also trying to catch up. This is obvious since these are two of the fastest developing nations. But how much an average citizen of each country is contributing? Let's look at the per capita emission map of the world - 

It looks like residents of the USA, Canada, Australia and a few of the gulf countries are emitting more than their fair share of CO₂. This should help us decide which countries should focus on personal action and mitigation strategy more than others.

How climate change aggravates inequality

Human climate Niche

This is perhaps the most time consuming, very significant, and startling aspect to understand about the relationship between climate change and inequality. Unlike above, the findings in the impact of climate on inequality is fairly new in academia, almost all the references I came across are no more than 3 years old. 

One can realize that climate change isn't going to affect all strata of society equally, that's very intuitive and obvious. What isn't obvious, is all the perplexing dynamics that are in play here. And that's what I'm going to explore next. Let's tackle across countries’ inequality first. 

In the world, not every country is equally vulnerable to climate risks. Increasing sea levels put coastal countries at more immediate risk than the rest of the world. Extreme weather events are also likely to affect some regions more than others. Likewise, an increase in global temperature would result in more catastrophic outcomes in warmer countries than in colder ones. 

Human Climate Niche - Over the past 6000 years, human populations have clustered in regions that offer optimum temperature for human beings. Our planet's temperature runs from -128 °F all the way up to 138 °F. Out of this range human population is concentrated between 40 to 80 °F, largely because agriculture yields are maximum in this range. Since food is a critical part of human existence, overall economic production, manufacturing, construction etc also thrive in this temperature range. Because of this, humans have evolved to have maximum health and cognitive benefits in the regions that offer climate niche.

Now what's happening is, the regions that offer climate niche, are shifting dramatically because of global warming. If we are unable to put a stop to our carbon emission in the next half-century, the climate niche will start shifting towards poles, and much of the areas where humans live currently will become extremely hot. Tropical areas would become completely unlivable, while countries like India would see a striking rise in heatwaves and other extreme weather events. This will result in a declining quality of life for billions of people, destruction of entire communities, millions of premature deaths, around 3.5 billion will be forced to migrate towards a suitable climate, not to mention the political strife this migration will cause. 

Some impacts of this shifting of climate are already visible today. You might be surprised to learn the fact that some colder countries are actually benefiting due to the rise in temperature. Countries like Canada, Greenland, Russia, Scandinavia, and some parts of the United States and Europe are seeing a rise in agricultural growth due to warmer summers and early springs. Moreover, warming will free up the locked, snow-covered land of these countries, making those places habitable and thus will contribute in the nation’s prosperity.

Meanwhile, the condition of warmer countries couldn't have been worse. Damage caused by increased extreme weather events has dragged down the economy of poor countries. As per one study, it’s estimated that after accumulating decades of small effects from warming, India's economy is about 31% smaller than it would have been in absence of global warming. The ratio between the top and bottom 10% of the population grew 25% larger during the 1961–2010 period compared with a world without global warming. 

Unequal vulnerability to extreme climate hazards

Not all countries are equally exposed to climate hazards like tropical cyclones, thunderstorms, tornadoes, drought, rain, hail, snow, lightning, fog, wind, temperature extremes, air pollution, etc. I highly recommend you to play around with this fun, interactive graphic to learn more about which countries or continents have a high climate change vulnerability index (CCVI).

As illustrated, Europe and part of the United States are safe zones while Africa and Asia are at extreme risks. Over 95% of the 234 'extreme risk' cities are in Africa and Asia while 86% of the 292 ‘low risk’ cities are located in Europe and the Americas. The top five cities completely insulated from climate hazards, Glasgow, Belfast, Edinburgh, Preston, and Middles-borough are all in the UK and the bottom five at the most risk are in Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Angola, all in Africa.

Even if a country is more exposed to climate hazards, but is economically rich, it can protect itself and recover way faster than the poorer ones. For example, Netherlands - a high-income country, is also a coastal country but has built sea walls and other structures to shield itself from rising sea levels and floods, something that poor tropical island can't afford to build.

Socially and economically disadvantaged and marginalized people are disproportionally affected by climate change - IPCC 2014

Even in a given country, inequality can play a major role in deciding how much someone gets impacted by climate hazards. As we discussed earlier, inequality can play out in two major forms, social and economic. Another associated factor is political forces. Let's explore them one by one.

Generally, it’s the socially and economically disadvantaged population that gets to live in coastal, low-lying areas, flood plains, and rural areas. This puts them at higher risk of getting exposed to climate-related disasters. For example, economic and racial factors made a large number of African American people to live in the low-lying regions of New Orleans, and they then suffered significant damage when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Given the same exposure, I mean if two families lived in the same region, one is rich another is poor, they are going to have unequal damage due to any climate risk. Rich people have sturdy homes to protect from floods, they've got air conditioning to prevent health damages from extensive heat. They also have the luxury to buy the insurance and often have surplus money to recover from any damage. 

Poor doesn't have any of these things. They have homes made of flimsy stuff so they are at risk in floods, they can't afford air conditioners so suffer from heatwaves, they experience losses of income, crops, livestock in case of disaster, are often forced to sell their assets to recover, have no access to insurance facilities, more prone to catch diseases like malaria and diarrhea in absence of hygiene and the list could go on forever. Any sort of climate disaster pushes extremely poor people towards ultra-extreme poverty. 

The only way that remains to help the poor is political interventions. In a society, governments are supposed to use public resources to recover and cope with any disaster and particularly help the disadvantaged section. But we live in an unequal society where political powers are dangerously skewed in favor of the advantaged group. More often than not, public resources are used to serve the welfare of the rich and not the disadvantaged.

For example, in Bangladesh, after the floods of 1988, loads of public money was spent in building the Greater Dhaka Western Embankment to protect the capital city, while completely ignoring the fact that the embankment will result in excessive flooding of the rural population that lied just outside the city perimeter. The rich and affluent of the city had a greater political influence than the rural folks, resulting in an action for only their welfare. And this is no uncommon happening in the modern world.

I hope by now, it’s very clear how the same social, economic, and political forces that are responsible for climate change are also responsible for increasing global inequality. The more we consume, emit CO₂, the more the temperature rises, the more disproportionately economy grows and the more unequal the world gets.

But, the opposite is also true, if we set out to fix one of these issues, another one will get positively affected too. And this presents us with a unique opportunity to work on both of these issues simultaneously, with similar sets of solutions. The measures that we are going to take in order to reduce climate change, will somehow make the world an equal, fairer place for everyone to live.