It’s official: July was the warmest month on record. Global warming is actually happening and its costs continue to rise. The World Meteorological Organization recently found that “weather, climate and water events resulted in 11,788 reported disasters between 1970 and 2021, with more than two million deaths and economic losses of $4.3 trillion (approximately four trillion euros).” .
Like a pandemic, climate change affects everyone, everywhere. Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, recently had to be evacuated as hundreds of wildfires ravaged the region, while the United States faced a resurgence of contagious mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, West Nile virus and dengue fever . In parts of Asia, heavy monsoon rains caused floods and destroyed livelihoods. In Malawi, two devastating storms exacerbated an ongoing cholera outbreak that has killed 1,600 people. The list goes on and on.
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However, the impacts are not evenly distributed: nine out of ten deaths and 60% of economic losses from climate crises and extreme weather occur in developing countries. I witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of landslides in Nanka, my hometown in southeastern Nigeria. Over the years there has been increasing erosion of the ravines [grandes hoyos en rocas y suelos] It has stolen homes, destroyed farmland and contributed to greater food insecurity.
The catastrophic consequences of climate change are reminiscent of the Covid-19 pandemic, which killed more than six million people, destroyed businesses and livelihoods, and wreaked havoc on the global economy. Indeed, the global response to Covid – now a persistent health problem rather than a public health emergency – holds important lessons for curbing global warming.
First of all, climate change constitutes what the World Health Organization calls a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and should be treated as such. Global warming fits the WHO’s typical definition of what a PHEIC is: “An extraordinary event that poses a risk to the public health of other States through the international spread of disease and may require a coordinated international response.” However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), rather than the WHO, is in a better position to lead the fight because it already provides governments with scientific information to develop climate policies.
The impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed: nine out of ten deaths and 60% of economic losses from climate crises and extreme weather occur in developing countries.
Second, the Global South must assume greater climate leadership. The underrepresentation of African health leaders in the creation of the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (Covax) has been a major obstacle to the global response to the pandemic. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, along with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the WHO had founded Covax to ensure equitable access to Covid vaccines, but the initiative – designed with a colonialist mindset – achieved results that were inconclusive The ideal they had suggested was clearly inadequate.
The IPCC made the same mistake: only a small percentage of the authors of its reports come from Africa. Leaders in Africa – a continent that has suffered disproportionately from the effects of climate change and is the continent that has contributed least to the global emissions that cause it – must be at the center of decision-making processes.
Third, Governments should take action to counter disinformation and false information. During the pandemic, untruths increased and led to an infodemic, i.e. an excess of both legitimate and misleading information. With nearly 5 billion users worldwide, social media platforms accelerated the spread of false claims about Covid. But authorities and scientists could also use them to reveal the true data.
To educate the public about climate change, its consequences and how to build a greener world, more scientists and experts from other fields need to post on social media and interact with users. What’s worrying is that almost half of users who used to tweet about global warming and biodiversity have been deactivated six months after Elon Musk took over Twitter (now
Rich countries have a moral responsibility to provide climate assistance to poorer countries, given their historical emissions
Fourth, all countries must pay their fair share of the global response effort. During the pandemic, rich countries have been asked to provide funding to help low- and middle-income countries access Covid drugs, tests and vaccines, with mixed results.
Likewise, because of their historical emissions, rich countries have a moral responsibility to provide climate assistance to poorer countries. Last year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) took an important step in this direction by establishing a Loss and Damage Fund for developing countries affected by the effects of global warming. But as laudable as such a move may be, vulnerable countries also need to improve their governance and fight corruption to curb climate change. For example, gold worth $9 billion (€8.3 billion) is smuggled out of Nigeria every year. The government could have invested this lost revenue in environmental projects, such as landslide prevention in Nanka.
After all, hoarding is useless when it comes to crises of truly global scope. During the pandemic, several countries in the Global North exacerbated inequality by stockpiling protective equipment, tests, vaccines and treatments and by clinging to intellectual property protections. And yet infectious diseases know no borders, just like climate change. Every country on the planet is suffering the devastating consequences, albeit in different ways.
Responding to climate change requires seeing and understanding the global community as one. My tribe in Nigeria, the Igbo, has a phrase that emphasizes the importance of collective action: “Ìgwèbụ̀íké”. It means: “We are stronger when we are united.” The pandemic has shown that an egalitarian model of global governance is necessary if we are to have any hope of leaving a habitable planet for future generations.
Ifeanyi M. Nsofor is a senior fellow at New Voices at the Aspen Institute and Global Atlantic for Health Equity at George Washington University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2023.
www.project-syndicate.org
Translated from English by David Meléndez Tormen.
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