Major economies such as India, Brazil and Russia are facing cascading crises caused by climate change, such as food insecurity, energy shortages and civil unrest, an industry analysis cited by AFP has warned.
While developing countries in Africa and Southeast Asia are expected to be hardest hit by rising temperatures, extreme weather and sea-level rise, many middle-income countries lack the infrastructure and legislative leeway to deal with the changing is climate.
As Europe calculates the cost of another record heat wave that has killed more than 1,500 people, the analysis shows that even countries that do not feel threatened by the climate crisis will have to adapt to rising global temperatures.
The analysis looks at countries’ performance on 32 structural issues – including political stability, economic strength, resource security, poverty and human rights – to assess each country’s capacity to cope. Countries are then divided into three categories: isolated, insecure and vulnerable.
Unsurprisingly, the richest countries perform well and are recognized as the most insulated from climate shocks thanks to a combination of better governance, high purchasing power and developed infrastructure.
Poor countries are classified as vulnerable because they do not have these advantages. However, several middle-income countries, including India, Indonesia and South Africa, also fall into this group.
“In Brazil, we’re seeing an erosion of environmental and social protections under Bolsonaro. In Russia, Arctic infrastructure will be undermined by warming, and you may see a leader like Putin pointing fingers at other groups and seeking to expand his territory,” Nichols said.
Global warming is expected to melt the permafrost of Russia’s north, turning it into a vast system of swamps, endangering more than 200,000 km of gas and oil pipelines, and causing systemic flooding, taiga fires and droughts in the southern parts of the country, which is the third largest producer of wheat in the world. According to CSIS, Russia is warming 2.5 times faster than the global average. And the cost of this damage to the Russian economy will reach 9 trillion rubles by 2050, according to forecasts by the Ministry of Development of the Russian Far East and the Arctic.
Despite being a G20 economy, Mexico falls into the category of fragile states largely due to its proximity to Central and South America, which face extreme climate-related disruptions, particularly in the form of mass emigration. “These risks are not limited by political boundaries, they will expand,” Nichols predicted. “Even if you’ve got your house in order, if your neighbor is in distress, it can seriously undermine your security.”
Under the UN-led climate action plan, rich nations pledged in 2009 to provide $100 billion a year to threatened and poorer countries by 2020, but so far they have failed to even come close funding level.
Nicholls reports that the analysis shows the need for developed countries to help countries that cannot help themselves. “We have seen that a relatively small number of people arriving in Europe and the US, due to the impact of the climate, are causing big problems,” he emphasizes. “There is an argument that we as isolated nations have a duty to help the vulnerable to protect themselves, which in turn helps protect us.” Nicholls adds that this week’s deadly heat wave in Europe is proof that even rich countries need to factor climate change into their future business and governance decisions.
“The scale of the climate threat is not diminishing, it is clearly going to have a huge impact,” warns Nicholls. “But countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and South America lack the resilience to deal with both the physical climate threat and the after-effects such as political instability and the breakdown of supply chains.”
Source: vesti.bg
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