Climate disasters, vaccine inequality and global economic recovery

'Six years ago, in Paris, the countries of the world committed themselves to avoiding the worst of that nightmare by eliminating net greenhouse-gas emissions quickly enough to hold the temperature rise below 2°C. Their progress towards that end remains woefully inadequate. Yet even if their efforts increased dramatically enough to meet the 2°C goal, it would not stop forests from burning today; prairies would still dry out tomorrow, rivers break their banks and mountain glaciers disappear.' - Excerpts from a recent Economist published article 'A 3°C world has no safe place'

This lack of effort, especially from the advanced countries, which are by far the main polluters, whereby, for instance, according to a Bloomberg article 'Global carbon project' in 2019, in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, China contributed 29 percent of total global emissions in this regard, followed by United States at 15 percent. Moreover, these countries have not provided climate finance to developing countries as earlier pledged. According to a Guardian published article 'Move faster to cut emissions, developing world tells rich nations': 'One of the major sticking points for the Cop26 talks is the rich world's failure to make good on a promise originally made in 2009 that $100bn a year in climate finance would flow to poor countries by 2020 to help them cut emissions and cope with the impacts of global heating.'

Climate changing crisis is already showing itself in no uncertain terms. A Guardian editorial 'The Guardian view on the climate summit: 100 days to save the world', for example, argues: 'The global reality of the climate crisis could hardly be more stark. A common theme is clear, from western Germany, where about 200 people perished in floods, to Henan province in central China, where at least 50 have died and about 400,000 have been evacuated after overwhelming downpours, to western Canada and the US, where a blistering set of heatwaves has provided the tinder for wildfires on a growing scale, through to the Middle East, where drought threatens communities from Algeria to Yemen, triggering unrest and regional disputes. On this planet there is no hiding place. ...Governments' recovery plans are increasingly falling short of what is needed to reach existing climate goals, never mind new ones. Globally, carbon emissions are again set to rise in 2023, not fall. The world is in danger of losing the path towards net zero. That failure comes down partly to money and partly to politics.' It has, no doubt, underlined the immense importance of the upcoming United Nations Cop26 climate conference on Oct 31, 2021.

Moreover, a July 8, 2021 Guardian editorial 'The Guardian view on the heat dome: burning through the models' pointed out: 'The disturbing signs of climate disruption are not limited to north America. Pakistan and Siberia have also had record-breaking high temperatures within the last few weeks, as have Moscow, Helsinki and Estonia.'

While these eruptions of climate disasters on a global scale are taking toll on the already pandemic-hit global economy, lack of vaccine equality - rich, advanced countries vaccinating much faster, and in turn, economically recovering much quicker than poor, developing countries - has hurt the prospects of global recovery. IMF's World Economic Outlook update: 'Fault lines widen in the global recovery', 'Economic prospects have diverged further across countries since the April 2021 World Economic Outlook (WEO) forecast. Vaccine access has emerged as the principal fault line along which the global recovery splits into two blocs: those that can look forward to further normalization of activity later this year (almost all advanced economies) and those that will still face resurgent infections and rising COVID death tolls. The recovery, however, is not assured even in countries where infections are currently very low so long as the virus circulates elsewhere.' Vaccine rollouts, therefore, need to improve drastically in developing countries, both for the overall lessening of gap of global economic recovery, but also of the recovery itself, as new Delta variant has, for example, significantly affected much vaccinated rich, advanced countries.

It can be safely concluded that while the developed countries hoarded and utilized vaccines with little care for the people of poor countries, they have seen economic recovery at much higher pace. According to an article by IMF's chief economist Gita Gopinath, for example, 'These revisions reflect to an important extent differences in pandemic developments as the delta variant takes over. Close to 40 percent of the population in advanced economies has been fully vaccinated, compared with 11 percent in emerging market economies, and a tiny fraction in low-income developing countries. Faster-than-expected vaccination rates and return to normalcy have led to upgrades, while lack of access to vaccines and renewed waves of Covid-19 cases in some countries, notably India, have led to downgrades.'

These are extraordinary times for the world as a whole, and in terms of ambitiousness and focus of domestic policies of countries, and the spiritedness of a multilateral effort, the response has been lacking quite woefully. Moreover, along with domestic politics globally, the role of media also needs a profound revisit to give needed attention and air-time to these concerns of existential nature. The world needs a mission-oriented, purpose-driven, multi-sectoral vision effort to deal with the climate change crisis. Lack of this has already resulted in the world not being able to avoid and be better prepared in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, which also has a strong causal linkage with climate change crisis.

(The writer holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Barcelona; he previously worked at the International Monetary Fund)

He tweets@omerjaved7

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021