Who Is Responsible for the Climate Crisis? A Perspective from the Global South

ABSTRACT

This article argues that insistence on adaptation to climate change, popularised by the rich nations of the Global North, is crowding out discussions on mitigation strategies. Mitigation (or degrowth) is central to formulating a fair and collective strategy to tackle the climate crisis at the global scale. In this context, we have calculated the historical cumulative emissions, material footprints, and carbon debt, which are essential prerequisites to tackling the climate crisis. This article empirically proves that the Global North owes a huge carbon debt based on historical cumulative emissions. We estimate the carbon debt of all the outlier countries (carbon debtors) to be US$ 3127.28 trillion, of which the US (the United States) and EU (European Union, including 28 countries) owe US$ 1174.19 and US$ 771.90 trillion, respectively. The paper concludes that any adaptation policy requires settling this debt through directly financing adaptation operations in the poor countries of the Global South and effective mitigation (de-growth) policies in the Global North.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate crisis
• carbon debt
• green growth
• de-growth
• Global South

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 If we see the recent reports of the IPCC, instead of taking historical cumulative emissions into the IPCC reports are focusing on the current status of climate change and the role of different countries in total emissions. For detail, see the Pörtner (Pörtner et al. 2022).

2 The conception of ecologically unequal exchange goes beyond the asymmetries in market power, money flow, and economic value. It refers to the biophysical metrics such as material and energy flows and embodied labour, water and land from peripheries to the core. For detail, see Hornborg (1998) and Jorgenson and Clark (2009).

3 Harvey’s notion of 3 per cent is based on the historical compound growth of capitalism from 150–2003 and the consensus among the economists that “a healthy capitalist economy, in which most capitalists make a reasonable profit, expands at 3 per cent per annum” (Hervey 2010a, 27).

4 In 2015, 20 countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Costa Rica, Timor, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Kiribati, Madagascar, the Maldives, Nepal, the Philippines, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Tanzania, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Vietnam formed a block named Vulnerable 20 (V20). Since then, the number of members in this group has been increasing, but we have only chosen above 20 for this paper.

5 Foster and Clark explain ecological imperialism in terms of

the pillage of the resources of some countries by others and the transformation of whole ecosystems upon which states and nations depend; massive movements of population and labour that are interconnected with the extraction and transfer of resources; the exploitation of ecological vulnerabilities of societies to promote imperialist control; the dumping of ecological wastes in ways that widen the chasm between centre and periphery; and overall, the creation of a global “metabolic rift” that characterises the relation of capitalism to the environment, and at the same time limits capitalist development. (Foster and Clark 2004, 187)

6 As longitudinal data GDP from 1850 to 2019 is only available for some of the selected countries, we were unable to calculate the average carbon intensity for all the countries from 1850 to 2017. Moreover, we know that the unitary method used to calculate the dollar equivalent has many limitations. However, our objective is to give a general approximation of climate debt so that further discourse can be initiated on how much developed countries of the global North owes to the poor countries of the Global South. This monetary conversion should be considered as a first-entry evaluation of the compensation that should occur.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paramjit Singh

Paramjit Singh teaches in the Department of Economics at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. He is a research associate at York Center for Asian Research at York University, Toronto, Canada. He has recently co-edited Global Political Economy: A Critique of Contemporary Capitalism, an international edition published by Routledge (Tylor and Francis). He has recently published in Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Studies in Political Economy, World Review of Political Economy, and Economic and Political Weekly.

Ashman Bajwa

Ashman Bajwa is a research scholar in the Department of Economics at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. She is working on industrial restructuring and environmental quality in India. Her research interests include environmental economics, Global South and industrial economics.