KARACHI: Historically, the Global North has been primarily responsible for creating the climate crisis in the world through industrialisation, which has contributed most of the carbon in the atmosphere whereas the Global South, which had no role in causing the problem, suffers most from its effects, with limited resources hindering its ability to address the issue.

This was said by Professor Emeritus Dr Partha Sen of the Delhi School of Economics at a lecture where he also urged the world, particularly the rich countries of the Global North, to take immediate action as time is ticking away.

Dr Sen joined via remote video link.

The lecture, ‘Climate Change in a Historical Setting and Countries of the Global South: Where are the Equity Considerations?’ was organised by the Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences under ‘The 23rd Hamza Alavi Distinguished Lecture’ series at Szabist on Monday.

Prof Partha Sen urges the world to address the issue as ‘time is ticking away’

Dr Sen said fighting climate change could not be done without taking into account the fact that the Global South had no role in creating the problem in the first place.

“Time is ticking away. The world must address the problem. Those who created the problem cannot be allowed to go scot-free. The historical responsibility for creating the climate problem rests with the rich countries, the so-called Global North, a fact recognised in the climate change discussions. It is their dirty industrialisation that resulted in the overwhelming share of the carbon in the atmosphere,” he said.

The Global South or the poorer countries, then, had no role to play in creating the climate problem, but had to cope with the effects of climate change. Their ability to tackle this is limited by the low levels of incomes, and the need to finance economic development, Dr Sen pointed out, adding that the Kyoto Protocol, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), recognised the so-called common but differentiated responsibilities of the Global North and the Global South.

So the countries of the North, he said, were required to make more stringent cuts in their fossil fuel use while the countries of the Global South were also asked to cut their emissions. The countries of the Global North promised to make financial transfers to those in the South for them to cope with the problem and make their infrastructure resilient to the effects of climate change, he added.

“But the aggregate flows are much lower than promised. Most developed countries have not come good on their promise of providing 0.7 percent of their Gross National Income (GNI) as overseas development aid, and the promised climate aid was over and above this,” he pointed out, adding: “The problem is serious. It is recognised by all parties but the Global North is dragging its feet over delivering the amount promised, and on the more up-to-date technology, that will reduce emissions.”

Dr Sen explained that in 1750, before the onset of industrialisation, atmospheric CO2 levels were around 275 parts per million (ppm). Today, that figure has soared to 415 ppm, with the rate of increase accelerating from 1 ppm per year in 1960 to nearly 3 ppm per year now. Human activities currently release more than 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually.

“The Industrial Revolution started sometime around 1760, and it gave rise to industrial capitalism. Output, productivity per worker grew very fast in the countries that experienced it. It began with the UK, and spread to other European countries, and the US. It was accompanied by moving labour from agriculture to industry. Industry is now based on technology, using coal for energy as opposed to animals, wind, or water,” he pointed out.

“Unlike traditional handicrafts, the Industrial Revolution marked the advent of manufacturing based on heavy industrial machinery to improve efficiencies and output. Steam power, for example, allowed for the creation of a semi-automated factory system, which meant that goods could be mass-produced, instead of labouriously created by hand,” he shared.

“Powering the heavy machinery central to industrialisation required vast amounts of energy, primarily derived from fossil fuels such as coal and later also petroleum and natural gas. What had started in the UK, soon spread across Europe and North America. With the new industry came a different form of relationship with the colonies: they were to supply raw materials of this new advanced industry and to serve as markets for the goods produced by it. The latter function was hamstrung by the widespread poverty in the colonies. But every trick in the book was used to ensure that demand did not leak away from the goods produced in the imperial countries,” he said.

“The industrial revolutions took place long before any meaningful environmental regulations. A pattern relating emissions of CO2 and rising temperature was noticed only in the second half of the 20th century. This discovery, notwithstanding, a pattern of growth based on fossil fuel use continues to this day. The environmental impact of this is deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and the continuous rise in greenhouse gases, remains a major challenge,” he said.

He said the rich countries try to pass the costs of tackling the climate problem to the Global South, which has two consequences. Firstly, it is inequitable in a dynamic sense. The Global South is being asked to pay for something that it was not responsible for creating. Second, by starving the Global South of funds, it immediately kills off any incipient growth and development in those regions.

On the other hand, if there was a transfer of technology from the Global North, then in the course of industrialisation, the additional deterioration of the earth’s climate will be minimal, he pointed out and added that finance is required for this cleaner technology, as well as to cope with the consequences of climate change.

“International negotiations on climate change have been going on for over 30 years,” he said. “In the meantime, the earth has become hotter, wetter and wilder. Like scientists, the vast majority of governments now agree that urgent steps are needed to reduce our impact on global warming. The first attempt at addressing the problem was in 1992. The UNFCCC was adopted during the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992. It acknowledged the existence of human-induced climate change and gave industrialised countries the major part of responsibility for combating it, but without specifying how,” the professor shrugged.

Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2024