Climate Change: Perspective of Underdeveloped Countries and Climate-related Disasters

Climate Change

So guys, today I wanted to talk about a major issue our world is facing, climate change. I know you guys have been seeing similar blog posts from other people since this topic is widely popular but bare with me, this is not your common ranting about the whole issue. People really began to think that individual contribution matters, which is very insignificant since any factory without filter does 10 times of the pollution you do every second. I would like to analyze it from the perspectives of undeveloped countries, so you can see that even these countries contribute so much to it, especially with the help of the recent global pandemic. Not only that, but people think that the climate change only consists of a warmer world, which is not even 5% accurate. A lot of natural disasters are tied to global warming and overall damage the world is facing. As you can see this blog post won't be coming from your friendly neighbourhood protector Spider-man, but from the mad mind Doc Oc himself. Get ready for an informative ride.

Evolving and overlapping global crises hit the world’s most vulnerable nations the hardest. Now, more than ever, world leaders must demonstrate solidarity and support with concrete action. 2020 registered as the warmest year on record (tied with 2016), the warmest ever for ocean heat, and the year with most named storms. 

While COVID-19 dominated 2020’s headlines, and rightly so, another emergency wreaked havoc in the background. As the pandemic ravaged the world, climate impacts continued to break records, mostly affecting the world’s most vulnerable populations.

The least developed countries (LDCs), home to one billion of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, have contributed the least to climate change yet suffer the worst from its impacts. In 2020 alone:
People of the Solomon Islands have been spared from any COVID-19 deaths, but almost 30 lost their lives to Cyclone Harold
Monsoons in south Asia left an indelible mark. Floods submerged almost a quarter of Bangladesh and nearly a million homes were inundated. Five million people were affected and at least 54 died, most of them children
Record flooding in Sudan in August and September devastated communities across the country; 100 people died and over 500,000 were displaced
The August flash floods in Yemen killed at least 172 people and damaged infrastructure, including UNESCO-listed world heritage sites, and
The heaviest floods in more than a century displaced thousands of Ugandans from their homes along the shoreline of Lake Victoria.

Overlapping crises

Preliminary analysis shows that, as of 15 September 2020, 51.6 million people globally have been directly affected by a combination of floods, droughts, or storms and COVID-19. Over 3,000 people have been killed.

The huge overlap between the pandemic and climate-related disasters demonstrates the need for a multi-layered response, not least because of the compounded vulnerability faced by communities in LDCs.

For this reason, LDCs are calling for solidarity and support from world leaders from developed countries. LDCs are concerned about shrinking overseas development assistance (ODA), and developed counties failing to meet their climate finance commitments.

They are also concerned that COVID-19-recovery packages and economic stimulus plans are not placing people, climate and nature at their core. Governments have pledged $151 billion in support of fossil fuels, with only 20% of those policies making financial support conditional on green requirements, such as setting climate targets or implementing pollution reduction plans.

Action, now

The pandemic has laid bare the need – and opportunity – to put resilience at the centre of macroeconomic fundamentals, to advance a truly green and resilient economy, rather than just responding to the great and growing array of non-financial external shocks.

2020 showed, more starkly than ever, that crises do not happen in siloes; we cannot deal with them singly, in isolation.

In this ‘remarkable year’, when decisions taken (both at the multilateral and national levels) will shape outcomes for climate, nature and people for decades to come, we must push for solutions that, together, can tackle the world’s evolving and overlapping crises.