The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science published a study, that highlights the exacerbation in global economic inequality due to global warming. It builds on previous studies. In 2015, Nature, the journal, had published a report that projected a decline of 75% by 2100, in the average income of the poorest incomes, in contrast to a world without anthropogenic warming, while the richest countries experienced some gains in income. According to a 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s climate science body, if global temperatures risemore than 1.5°C by the end of the 21st century, the poorer countries are likely to face critical challenges, which include the destruction of entire communities and millions of premature deaths.
In order to determine the impact of global warming on the recent evolution of inequality, the study combines counterfactual historical temperature trajectories from a suite of global climate models with extensively replicated empirical evidence of the relationship between historical temperature fluctuations and economic growth. A combination of these have allowed the researchers to generate probabilistic country-level estimates of the influence of anthropogenic climate on historical economic output as well as economic inequality between countries.
There has been 17-31% reduction in per capita GDP amongst the poorest four deciles of the population-weighted country-level per capita GDP distribution. This has yielded a ∼25% increase in population-weighted between-country inequality over the past half century. Even though there has been a decrease in between-country inequality, there is a ∼90% possibility that this has been slowed down due to global warming. This implies that the per capita GDP of the poor countries is lower today than it would have been, if global warming had not taken place.
The primary factor driving this trend is the parabolic relationship between annual economic growth and temperature. Over decades, there has been a robust, substantial and disparate accumulation of declines in economic output due to anthropogenic warming. Long-term warming has increased growth across cool countries (rich and temperate countries) and decreased growth across warm countries. This is because they either lack the resources to protect against climate change or tend to reside in warmer regions, wherein additional warming would be detrimental to health and productivity.
For example, in Norway, warming shifts the country-mean temperature closer to the empirical optimum that results in cumulative economic benefits. However, in India, warming shifts the country-mean temperature further from the empirical optimum that results in cumulative economic losses. The per capita GDP in Bangladesh was 12% lower in the two decades before 2010. In Sub-Saharan African countries like Sudan, Burkina Faso and Niger, climate change has driven GDP per capita more than 20% lower that it would have been.
This entails that while poor countries have not received an equal share of the benefits of fossil fuel use, they have also been significantly harmed by the warming caused due to the energy consumption of the wealthy countries. Thus, in consistence with the strong spatial correlation between GDP and temperature, there also exists a positive relationship between the current GDP, per capita cumulative emissions and impact from historical warming. An expansion over longer periods indicates the full impact of warming since the Industrial Revolution as being greater than the impact calculated in the past half century.
The study bases its quantification of the impact of global warming on economic inequality and relies on country-level relationships between temperature and economic growth. The study focuses on country-level data because wide availability (in both space and time) allows the use of empirical relationships to quantify how historical temperature changes have affected economic outcomes around the world. Studying the impact of climate change on the evolution of within-country inequality will require strong assumptions about how within-country income distributions respond to aggregate shocks at the country level or comprehensive subnational data on incomes (currently unavailable for most countries).
For instance, between 1961-2020, all 18 countries with historical cumulative emissions less than 10 ton CO2 per capita have suffered negative economic impacts, with a median impact of −27% (relative to a world without anthropogenic forcing). Similarly, 36 countries with historical emissions between 10-100 ton CO2 per capita, 34 (94%) have suffered negative economic impacts, with a median impact of −24%. In contrast, 19 countries whose historical emissions exceed 300 ton CO2 per capita, 14 (74%) have benefited from global warming, with a median benefit across those 14 countries of +13%.
The impact of increasing urbanisation and economic development in reducing the temperature sensitivity of economies has been implicitly included in the estimated impact of temperature on growth in GDP and inequality. However, an explicit quantification of the roles of such moderating influences will be an important avenue for future research, to critically understand how future climate change will impact the level and distribution of global income.
Trade is another factor that has possibly influenced the impacts of global warming on population-weighted inequality. For instance, a large chunk of the reduction in historical inequality during the period of study has been a result of unprecedented growth in East Asian incomes, particularly China, due to critical trading relationships with high-income countries.
There exists widespread disagreement regarding the nature and causes of observed inequality trends. Any attempt at quantifying climactic influence on these trends will have implications beyond the design and adaptation of climate risk management measures. This quantification is critical to understand the costs and benefits of global warming, especially on the fundamentals of economic production across sectors. Inequality in the impacts of climate change raises pertinent issues of international justice as well.
The study concludes by asserting that an understanding of the causes of economic inequality is critical for achieving equitable economic development. The results of the study indicate that low-carbon energy sources have the potential to provide a substantial secondary development benefit, in addition to the primary benefits of increased energy access.
India Outbound
April 25, 2019
source https://indiaoutbound.org/impact-of-global-warming-on-global-inequality/
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