Climate Change or Climate Apartheid?

11/28/20223 min read

Geographically and geologically, groups residing in high mountains, polar areas, coastal regions, the Arctic (IPCC 2019), and in tropical and/or low-lying regions (Houghton 2015) are most affected by changing weather and environmental hazards.

At the socio-political and economic levels, climate impacts have the greatest impact on groups including women (UNFCCC 2022), children (Perera and Nadeau 2022), the elderly (Kriebel-Gasparro 2022), Indigenous communities (EPA 2022), persons with disabilities (OHCHR 2020), racial minorities (EPA 2021), marginalised religious groups (MRGI 2008), and groups reliant on coastal and agricultural livelihoods (IPCC 2019).

The wealthy, who intersect all of the above groups but from a standpoint of economical privilege, have the resources and opportunity to escape or adapt to geographical and geological circumstances and to overcome socio-political disadvantage (UNHRC 2019).

Just as economic privilege shines across different facets of one’s identity, so can those facets be dimmed by economic disadvantage.

Ultimately, it is the poor - including those suffering from displacement, housing instability, and those of low-ranked castes - who remain trapped in their sociopolitical, economic, and geographic conditions, and are unable to adapt to extreme climate impacts and events in a way that protects their health, livelihoods, and environment (UNHRC 2019).

Poverty tends to overlap with and compound other forms of disadvantage, multiplying in times of crisis.

Climate impacts aggravate existing poverty and related stressors, including loss or damage to livelihoods and homes, heightened food insecurity, increased loss of belonging and identity, forced shift from transient to chronic poverty, loss of assets, malnutrition, rise in heat-related deaths, and higher rates of transmission of diseases (Olsson et al 2014).

Philip Alston, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur, warned of a “climate apartheid”, where “the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict, while the rest of the world is left to suffer” (UNHRC 2019).

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References:

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