Questions unfashionable
The threat of climate change is growing more real and more urgent by the day. According to Climate Nexus, a rise in temperature by 1.5 percent can lead to sea-level rise of 48cm, leaving 46 million people at risk of displacement; this could mean water shortages in Asia, Australia, the Mediterranean and Brazil; it will bring down the production of essentials like wheat, maize and soybeans; and as per estimates by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), this will put 20-30 percent of species at risk of extinction. These are just some of the risks posed by climate change.
From policymakers to children—everyone is doing their part to raise awareness about this spiralling global problem; and rightfully so. The urgency of the situations has compelled governments and international bodies like the United Nations to map out and initiate effective programmes to fight climate change, requiring billions and trillions of dollars.
For instance, Germany's ruling coalition government has agreed to spend 40 billion Euro, which translates to USD 44 billion in just four years, till 2023, to cut the country's carbon emissions. Mexico has pledged to reduce its emissions by half by 2050, and the cost for this in economic terms would mean almost 7 to 15 percent of their GDP. And then there is the EU's plan to cut emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050, which, according to a European Commission report, could translate to average annual investment of 1.33 trillion Euro or USD 1.44 trillion in 2031-2050.
The undertakings are expensive involving hefty sums of public money and needs time to yield results, thus ambitious, especially in a world where resources are scarce and choices are life altering, at least for the people struggling to get by in the present.
According to Global Hunger Index, the number of people suffering from hunger rose to 822 million in 2018 from 785 million in 2015. UNHCR's annual Global Trends Report released in 2019 suggest that in 2018, almost 70.8 million people had been displaced—they have nowhere to go and are living off the charity of the donors; at times perishing on the seas and under the open sky, because often countries turn their backs on these desperate refugees—the very countries that are at the helm of these climate change initiatives.
Add to this the problem of rising economic disparity among the people. There are more billionaires in the world now than ever before. According to recent Oxfam data, the "wealth of the world's billionaires increased [by] USD 900 billion in the last year [2018], which is USD 2.5 billion a day"; "while almost half of humanity have barely escaped extreme poverty, living on less than USD 5.50 a day". According to the same Oxfam data presentation, "every day 10,000 people die because they lack access to affordable healthcare" and 262 million children are being deprived of their education every day, due to rising economic disparity between the rich and the poor.
In the face of such gruelling numbers people often tend to wonder which of the necessities should policymakers prioritise while allocating scarce resources—provide for the people and meet their immediate needs, or prepare to fight a deadly foe that can claim millions of lives in the coming years?
This dilemma had troubled policymakers for long, but it is time to ask ourselves: are sustainability and income equality mutually exclusive? Apparently not. According to a report by Isabell Kempf, Co-Director UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative, "The sustainability of the environment, once mistakenly thought to compete with economic development, is now understood to be complementary and necessary to 'end poverty in all its forms everywhere'".
According to Isabell Kempf, "New tools of economic analysis and transparency that reveal the true value of natural capital and sustainable ENR management mobilise support for poverty-environment mainstreaming within government."
This is true for Bangladesh as well, a country that stands in the line of fire in the fight against climate change. We have 40 million people in our country suffering from food insecurity and 11 million facing acute hunger (World Food Programme). Similarly, we are home to more than 1.1 million refugees who had to flee Myanmar, in the face of systematic genocide perpetrated by their army, as part of an ethnic cleansing policy in the Rakhine State. And with donor support waning, it is becoming extremely difficult to feed this ever-increasing population.
Youth unemployment remains a big challenge with the rate of unemployment in Bangladesh currently standing at 4.37 percent, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). Of the total unemployed, 46 percent are university graduates.
Child labour due to poverty is another big challenge for us—children are still being forced to take up domestic work, if fortunate, and risky industrial labour tasks, in order to earn daily sustenance.
These figures pose some difficult questions. What should we prioritise when allocating funds in the budget—food, employment generation opportunities, education, a better life for our people, or projects that would enable us to fight the impacts of climate change?
According to water resource and climate change specialist Professor Ainun Nishat, it is essential to increase people's resilience to fight climate change; however, economic disparity can curb people's resilience against climate change.
While talking with this writer, Professor Nishat added that the poor do not have the ability to fight climate change because their resilience capacity is limited. One way to address this might be to enhance the skills of the youth, which would make them eligible for skill-oriented jobs; this can result in better standard of living of the individuals and their families and improved resilience against climate threats.
The better the standard of living, the more sustainable lifestyle choices people will make. For instance, often in front of shops, we see boards advertising sustainable products, like jute bags instead of polythene bags, which a buyer has to pay extra cash for. However, it will not be possible for a buyer to pay extra for a jute bag, if they cannot afford it. The end result, despite sustainability messages: the buyer will end up availing the free polythene bag to carry the purchased good. The message is clear: unless we reduce economic disparity and ensure prosperity of the people, despite all the money spent in making advertisements and promoting them, we will not be able to get the masses to make environment friendly lifestyle choices. And this holds true for the world at large.
With depleting resources and increasing threat of climate change, it is time we made smart climate decisions, that would enable us to fight off global warming while also bringing people out of poverty. With effective poverty-environment and climate mainstreaming tools, sustainable resource management and integrated bottom-up policy formation and implementation approach, we will be able to strike the right balance between income equality and sustainability. The question is: are we ready to ask ourselves the hard questions?
Tasneem Tayeb works for The Daily Star. Her Twitter handle is @TayebTasneem
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