Lesson 13 min 20 XP
Climate Change and Developing Countries
Why the countries that contributed least to climate change will suffer most from it, and the fight over who pays.
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Why the countries that contributed least to climate change will suffer most from it, and the fight over who pays.
The countries most vulnerable to climate change are those that contributed least to causing it. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for roughly 4% of cumulative global CO2 emissions but faces some of the most severe climate impacts: more frequent droughts in the Sahel, rising sea levels threatening coastal West Africa, and declining agricultural yields across the continent. Small island developing states like Tuvalu and the Maldives face literal existential threats from sea level rise.
The economic costs are staggering. The Vulnerable Twenty (V20) group of climate-vulnerable nations estimates that its members have lost 20% of potential GDP growth due to climate change over the past two decades. The World Bank projects that climate change could push an additional 132 million people into extreme poverty by 2030. In agriculture-dependent economies, a single severe drought can reverse years of development progress.
Developing countries face a cruel double burden: they need to adapt to climate change while still developing their economies. Climate adaptation -- building sea walls, developing drought-resistant crops, upgrading infrastructure for extreme weather -- is expensive. The UN Environment Programme estimates that adaptation costs in developing countries will reach $140-300 billion per year by 2030. Current adaptation finance flows cover less than a tenth of this need.
The promise of $100 billion per year in climate finance from developed to developing countries, made at the Copenhagen summit in 2009, was not met until 2022 at the earliest, and much of what was counted was repackaged existing aid or loans rather than new grants. At COP28 in 2023, countries agreed to establish a Loss and Damage fund to compensate vulnerable nations for climate impacts they cannot adapt to. But initial pledges totaled only $700 million -- a fraction of estimated needs.