Where climate burdens fall heaviest: Nations with lightest emissions

In the crowded capital city of Dakar, jutting into the Atlantic Ocean, Senegal’s summer rains came in torrents. Rushing water became waist-high in some places; pedestrians hired horse-drawn carts to carry them across streets. Three people died in the deluge. 

Elsewhere this year, the toll was worse. Record floods in Nigeria displaced some 1.4 million people and killed hundreds. And in Pakistan, relief efforts are still underway after the deadliest floods in the country’s history. Whole communities were displaced and crop planting disrupted by deluges that, according to a recent media briefing by the country’s climate change minister, Sherry Rehman, have affected 1 in 7 Pakistanis.

Meanwhile, the Horn of Africa is facing the worst drought in decades – with millions facing severe food insecurity, according to aid workers – amid exceptionally dry weather for much of the world. 

All of this is giving increasing urgency to a long known, but often ignored, aspect to the problem of global warming: Climate change is deeply unfair, with those countries that have contributed least to the problem feeling the most devastating consequences. Frustration with this reality is growing on the streets of cities like Dakar and Islamabad, and that is translating into rising pressure to address the issue in international climate negotiations, such as the COP27 gathering that started this weekend in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

“It’s the underdeveloped countries that suffer the most,” says Nafi Fall, a college student marching down a wide boulevard in Dakar’s Medina neighborhood a week ago, part of a protest meant to call attention to the disastrous effects of climate change in Africa. “We need to think of the future.”

Much of the unfairness is apparent in the cause and effect of climate change. The entire continent of Africa, for instance, is responsible for only 3% to 4% of the world’s heat-trapping carbon emissions, while the United States is responsible for about 20% of these emissions since 1850 – a percentage well above other nations. (The U.S. has lowered its carbon emissions over past decades – by about 8% between 1990 and 2020, according to the Environmental Protection Agency – but the impact of atmospheric carbon is cumulative. To calculate the impact any country has had on climate change, one must consider the total amount of its emissions over the past century.)

“While we’re all experiencing the climate crisis, it is falling disproportionately on the poorest and most marginalized people, who contributed the least to the problem,” says Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “And it’s the richer nations, like the United States, the nations of the European Union, who bear much of the responsibility.”

This disproportionate burden is becoming even clearer because of an evolving field called rapid attribution science, which can quickly tie specific weather events to climate change. Pakistan’s floods, for instance, were likely caused by climate change, with 75% more water falling during those intense monsoon weeks than would have been the case had the world not warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius since the preindustrial era, some scientists have estimated using these new methods. Climate change also made the region’s heat wave this past summer 30% more likely, scientists estimate.

“People in Pakistan ... have paid” for Western luxuries

“People in developed countries must realize that people in Pakistan, the poorest of the poor, have paid for the quality of life and luxuries [Western societies] enjoy due to advanced industrialization in their societies,” said Pakistani Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal in a recent press briefing.

In the wake of the flooding, the United Nations appointed Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif to be vice chairman of this month’s international conference. 

The Conference of Parties, or COP, is an annual U.N. gathering of diplomats in which countries agree on global benchmarks and strategies for addressing climate change. Mr. Sharif is expected to make the case, along with the other 133 nations of the so-called G-77, that world leaders should do more to provide for “loss and damage” connected to climate change – in particular, by setting up a new international finance mechanism that would help compensate countries for climate disasters.  

There is some debate over whether that approach is realistic, and whether a fight over it might derail the conference before it starts. But even if wealthy countries agreed to the concept, it would not necessarily mean quick payments to vulnerable countries. For years, wealthy nations have fallen short on pledges that exist already for $100 billion a year in climate finance to help poorer, more vulnerable nations. 

Still, advocacy around this question of loss and damage – and the importance of building greater fairness in the climate realm – has gained steam.

“The issue has evolved significantly over the years, and I would say the last few months and last couple of weeks,” says Preety Bhandari, senior adviser in the global climate program and finance center for the World Resources Institute. “It is in that context of justice – and also in the context of solidarity.” 

A shift from U.S. and others?  

For years, the United States has opposed the concept, with officials saying that there are already funding mechanisms to funnel money to help countries adapt to climate change and repair from disasters. Some diplomats also worried that admitting fault or liability for any climate disasters could open the door to a never-ending barrage of lawsuits. 

But in recent days John Kerry, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, has signaled more sympathy for the idea. 

“I think it’s important that the developed world recognizes that a lot of countries are now being very negatively impacted as a consequence of the continued practice of how the developed world chooses to propel its vehicles, heat its homes, light its businesses, produce food. Much of the world is obviously frustrated,” Mr. Kerry told Time magazine in an Oct. 26 interview. “We have to find a way for more capital to flow into developing countries.”   

Other advanced nations seem to be shifting position as well. Last month, Denmark became the developing world’s first central government to make a dedicated pledge of loss-and-damage compensation for climate-vulnerable countries, promising some $13 million. 

But fairness, those involved with climate policy say, is complicated – and it goes beyond compensation.

“A lot of people look at fairness as a blame consideration,” says Rahul Tongia, a senior fellow at the Center for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi. “I think a much better framing is who can do how much, and even who should do how much, to address the problem.”

There is a finite volume of carbon emissions that the world, collectively, can release into the atmosphere to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, he points out, often called the “carbon budget.”   

Who should be able to emit how much of what remains in that budget? The international community for years has focused on a policy of “ratcheting” up emission reductions, and recently there has been a movement to condemn new fossil fuel development. But is it fair – or practical – to ask poorer nations to not develop the same energy resources that wealthier ones have used to build prosperity?

The question of fossil fuels in Senegal

Senegal, for instance, is home to some wind and solar farms, but is also pushing for a role in the fossil fuel industry, with recently discovered offshore gas and oil wells set to come online next year. Experts say those developments could help Senegal’s economy grow as much as 8.1% in 2023.

For years, wealthier countries opposed this approach. At last year’s COP summit in Glasgow, Scotland, 39 countries signed a statement reading, in part, that they would “end new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022, except in limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with a 1.5°C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement.” 

But this position shifted when Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe itself faced gas shortages. Earlier this year, the chancellor of Germany – one of the signatory countries on that statement – traveled to Dakar to talk about helping Senegal further exploit its gas fields.

Still, in Senegal the broad support for fossil fuel development is not shared by everyone. Participants in the fishing industry have expressed concern that the offshore rigs will further displace their catch. 

Khady Camara, president of the environmental group Vacances Vertes, which organized the recent climate march, expressed skepticism of oil and gas projects without ruling them out completely.

“We can wait before exploiting it,” says Ms. Camara. “Africa is very rich; Senegal is very rich: We have sun, water, wind; we don’t have a bad [amount of] energy resources to exploit before thinking of exploiting oil.”

That still leaves the larger question of whether nations can find common ground on climate fairness. While some say they are wary of expecting too much from any one U.N. conference, others say the energy crisis and the widespread impact of extreme climate events may pave the way for more head-on grappling with fairness.

“The climate crisis is so deeply unfair,” says Dr. Cleetus. “On so many levels, it’s veered off into this space of continued unfairness. Now the question is, can we try to set some things right?”

Nick Roll reported from Dakar, Senegal; Hasan Ali from Islamabad; and Stephanie Hanes from Northampton, Massachusetts.