Climate Debt
“Millions of people – in small islands, less-developed countries, landlocked countries as well as vulnerable communities in Brazil, India and China, and all around the world – are suffering from the effects of a problem to which they did not contribute.” – Angelica Navarro, chief climate negotiator for Boliva.
There’s a myriad of bureaucratic, business-friendly half-measures floated around in discussions about climate change and carbon emissions - from carbon offsets to emissions trading - but what about common-sense proposals? Those less centered around developing confusing markets for pollution, and more focused on keeping coal and oil where it’s at - and out of our atmosphere.
There’s one concept we’ve heard of, and it’s picking up serious steam as the climate talks in Copenhagen inch closer. It’s called climate debt – a reparations that the world’s richer nations would pay to the poorer nations for the climate crisis. And it really is as simple as it sounds.
Developed countries, which represent only 20 percent of the world’s population, are responsible for about 75 percent of all greenhouse-gas pollution that is helping cause an unstable climate. Whereas developing nations, making up the remaining 80 percent of the population, are only responsible for 25 percent of pollution. And it’s estimated that 75 to 80 percent of the damages caused by global warming will be suffered by developing countries. And in case you were curious – the U.S alone, which makes up a mere 5 percent of the world’s population, contributes 25 percent of all carbon emissions.
At the U.N. climate negotiations last June in Bonn, Germany, Bolivian ambassador Angelica Navarro spoke about what this climate debt could look like, describing it as three-fold: Rich countries need to pay the costs associated with adapting to a changing climate, make deep cuts to their own emission levels “to make atmospheric space available” for the developing world, and pay Third World countries to leapfrog over fossil fuels and go straight to cleaner alternatives. “We cannot and will not give up our rightful claim to a fair share of atmospheric space on the promise that at some future stage, technology will be provided to us.”
