Environmental Woes Could Reverse Global Development

Storms, fires, rising seas, floods and other consequence of climate change could plunge one third of the world’s population into extreme poverty by 2050, according to the 2013 Human Development Report, released last week by the UN Development Programme. On a more positive note, the report says, “Extreme income poverty has plummeted from 1990, when 43 percent of the globe’s population lived on the equivalent of less than $1.25 a day, to 2008 when 22 percent of the world’s population, or very roughly 1.5 billion people, live at that level of income poverty,” reports Christopher F. Schuetze for the International Herald Tribune, though climate change could reduce those gains, too. “For the first time since the industrial revolution, Brazil, China and India have a roughly equal output to the industrial nations of Europe and North America.” Paradoxically, countries that are not the biggest polluters could feel most effects of climate change. Climate change will reduce levels of income, education, agricultural output, life expectancy, particularly in the southern hemisphere. – YaleGlobal