1) What does the toll of two decades (1980-2002) of climate-related disasters tell us about vulnerability and inequality at the global level? (Chapter 3)
The inequality at the global scale is very obvious when it comes to the degree of adverse effects that climate-related disasters cause. Accordingly, wealthy nations suffer relatively at a lower level compared to poor or developing nations. The reason behind this is the inability of the latter to respond to such natural calamities in a timely, efficient way. They basically, do not have enough resources to mitigate the damaged done by natural calamities. Timely and sufficient response is essential to prevent further damage caused by natural calamities. The loss of homes and lives are important effects of calamities that need to be addressed immediately among poor or developing countries if such inequality be overcome.
There is also a poor accounting of the statistics caused by such calamities on poor or developing countries compared to wealthy countries such as the United States. While it is true that such accounting reports may vary even in wealthy countries the variations are not as high as those in poor or developing countries. There are instances that the death toll differences between report in poor and developing countries could deviate from hundreds to millions, unlike in wealthy countries which are just usually in thousands difference. This inconsistency in accounting reports only proves the inability of poor and developing countries to determine the extent of damage that climate-related calamities do to their territories. If one cannot account for the damage done, then it is most likely that insufficient help could be sent as well as insufficient mitigation efforts could be done. Nevertheless, there is also an inequality in terms of the effects of the same type climate-related calamities to different nations. Wealthy countries appear to suffer more from drought while poor countries, especially those in the tropics suffer more on floods and typhoons. These that certain natural factures contribute to the inequality. Nevertheless, in general, wealthy country are better at mitigating the risks of climate related calamities, due to the fact that they have more access to natural resources and technologies which could be utilized during emergencies.
2) If a country’s wealth (as expressed through per capita GDP) only explains a small fraction of its climate vulnerability, what other factors better predict climate-related deaths? Why? (Chapter 4)
The country’s Gross Domestic Product does not reflect the distribution of wealth across the said country. In fact, a nation may have high GDP but could still have the majority of its people living in or below poverty line. Hence, one of the factors that influence climate vulnerability is the distribution of wealth across a nation. When there is an extreme inequality in the distribution wealth, each person would have different capacity to cope with the effects of climate-related disasters. Typically, richer people would respond more efficiently to such scenarios compared to poor people. Once a rich person loses a house, he or she could rebuild it easily while a poor person would have to wait for a relatively long periods of time to find a new shelter. Another factor is political institutions that are fragile. The fragility of political institutions delays disaster response. There are also times when such disasters become venue for warring political factions to fight rather than to help each other resolve the issues at hand. The third is reliance on narrow range of export crops which prices are highly volatile. This threatens the food supply after a disaster happens. Note that a lack of food supply threatens the health. The fourth is severe level of deforestation. Denuded forests could influence the water holding capacity of soil adversely. Accordingly, denuded forest could hold very little water making areas near them to be flooded at an alarming rate whenever strong rains and typhoons occur.
3. Chapter 5 introduces the idea of “development pathways” and argues that this concept helps explain why some countries emit more climate pollution than others. Explain the concept of a development pathway and its links to pollution.
Development pathway pertains to the commodity that each nations export in order to maintain its economy. At present each nation specializes on certain group of commodities. These commodities are produced in different rates and in different energy consumption. Oil products, for example, consume more energy to produce than services (such as labor). The higher the energy consumed to produce a commodity, the higher the contribution to climate pollution. In general countries which manufacture their commodities emit the highest amount of climate pollutants, while those that produce services are their primary export produce the lowest amount of climate pollutants. Raw material exporting countries (about 135 countries) also produce relatively less climate pollutants compared to the “manufacturers” which are only about 20 countries.
4) Why do Roberts and Parks think that “embedding strong principles of special and differential treatment” in international climate politics have a positive effect? Identify two reasons or justifications that embedding “fairness” would help with reducing climate change.
Embedding strong principles of differential and special treatment means that each nation’s developmental pathway would be considered on how it should participate in the plight to reduce worldwide climate pollutants. These means that not every nation would be asked to do the same thing for the aforementioned cause. Such approach would be justifiably embedding fairness as not all nations contribute equally to the production of climate pollutants. Accordingly, the richer nations, those which export oil-based products and manufactured products, are the ones that pollute the world more compared to other poorer countries which only export either services or raw materials. This means that if the approach is applied, then richer nations must contribute more to solve the climate pollutant problems – meaning they have to invest more resources in mitigating its effects compared to poorer countries. The other reason is that such approach, since every nation would have his or her part in the reduction of climate pollutants, would allow poorer nations to shift into developmental pathways that would make them wealthier nations but with minimal increase in climate pollutants emission.
Work Cited
Roberts, Timmons and Parks, Bradley. A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2007. Print.
