hankyoreh

People in Pakistan wade through flood waters after severe flooding hit the country in the summer of 2022. (AP/Yonhap)

.

In 2022, Pakistan suffered devastating floods, submerging one-third of the country under water. Rainfall two to three times the yearly average and left some 30 million people displaced. The World Bank estimated that the economic losses and damage caused by such weather will exceed US$30 billion.

What caused the floods in Pakistan? While it is impossible to pinpoint the direct cause and effect, it is hard to ignore the fact that atmospheric CO2 levels have risen from just 280 parts per million in the 19th century to more than 420 ppm in 2023.

The carbon cycle, which takes in and releases the right amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen, has gone bust.

Who broke the planet? In 2022, the Hankyoreh’s climate change team published a graphic news report on climate inequality that summarized greenhouse gas emissions by country, which showed that China emits the most CO2 per year.

China accounted for roughly one-third of global emissions, followed by the US, the European Union, and India. South Korea (1.7%) came in at No. 10.

It’s unfair to assign blame based on these statistics alone, as newly industrialized countries such as China and India have only recently become significant emitters of greenhouse gas emissions.

The US (24.6%) and the European Union (17.1%) are first and second in terms of cumulative emissions from 1975-2020. Add to that the per capita emissions, and a country like Pakistan is at the end of the list of more than 150 countries for which statistics are available.

The world first tackled climate change at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, a pivotal meeting in environmental history where the concept of “sustainable development” was proposed. As CO2 levels rose to 355 ppm, the heads of state at the time agreed that this was becoming a vexing problem and signed a climate change agreement.

The UN climate summit, also known as COP, which was held in the United Arab Emirates this year, is the highest decision-making body of the agreement.

But nothing has changed since then. With the withdrawal of the US from the summit in 2001, the Kyoto Protocol, which called for industrialized countries to reduce their emissions by 5.2% below 1990 levels, has fallen into disrepute, and carbon dioxide levels have risen well above the 400 ppm mark that scientists say the world should keep below if we want to look forward to our future.

While a goal of keeping the temperature increase to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels was agreed to in Paris, France, in 2015, the agreement did not impose any obligations on countries, such as an exact percentage reduction, which is why COP becomes garners so much attention.

Climate change negotiations since the 1990s have been, in a nutshell, the world’s fight over a single resolution: the US Senate’s Byrd-Hagel Resolution, according to Chung Rae-kwon, a longtime climate change negotiator and former climate envoy to the United Nations, in his book “Climate Talks.”

The resolution was passed unanimously by the US Senate in 1997, and stated that the US government should not assume any obligations under a climate agreement unless major developing countries such as China and India accept equivalent legal obligations.

This pattern continued for the next 30 years of climate negotiations. Developed countries like the US demand that developing countries take on the same greenhouse gas reduction obligations as they do. When developing countries say, “That's not fair, we can’t do that,” the developed world says, “Well, then, we won’t do it either.”

In the meantime, climate change has become such a serious issue that every country, both developed and developing, needs to take action.

One of the breakthroughs was the idea of industrialized countries paying for the economic losses and damage caused by climate change. Following the agreement on the principle of establishing the fund at the COP in 2022, a decision on the fund and its operational plan was adopted this year, and the loss and damage fund was officially launched.

Developed countries have been voluntarily contributing to the fund, which is not legally liable for climate change damages. According to the Climate Action Network International, only US$800 million has been pledged to date. Of that, the US has pledged a measly US$17.5 million.

US$30 billion and US$800 million. That’s the difference in the amount of climate damage Pakistan alone has suffered versus the amount pledged to the loss and damage fund by advanced economies. For anyone to place any weight in the developed nations’ pledge to end fossil fuels, they’ll need to change their attitudes about paying for damage and loss.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]