Headline, August 04 2023/ ''' '' POOREST -WORLD'S- PONDERS '' '''

''' '' POOREST -WORLD'S- 

PONDERS '' '''

GROWTH IS THE BEST WAY TO LIFT PEOPLE out of poverty and improve average living standards. But in the developing world - more growth still leads to more emissions.

THANK GOODNESS for enthusiasts and the obsessives. If everyone always took a balanced view of everything, nothing would ever get done.

But when campaigners' worldview seeps into the staid apparatus of policymaking and global forums, bad decisions tend to follow. That, unfortunately, is especially true in the world of climate change.

One example is the effect of global warming on the world's poorest people. As the planet heats up - extreme events such as droughts, floods and storms are becoming much more common and much more severe.

Over the coming decades many, many vulnerable farmers from Mali to Mekong Delta, will find their crops failing more frequently. And as resources grow scarer, more and more fighting will break out.

This pattern is no longer just a warning by activists. It is accepted by the mainstream to the point where fears of a surge in climate migration are fodder for the nativist right.

Because people are understandably troubled by the idea of climate change forcing poor farmers to leave behind their ancestral lands, an important goal of adaptation spending is to help them stay.

YET the truth is more complex. The vast majority of displaced people will not cross international borders but move within their own country. By 2050, some 50 million - 216 million people could be on the move internally. And many will be rural folk moving to cities, where their lives are likely to become better.

Urbanisation usually aids development, bringing people closer to schools, health care and well-paying jobs, as well as more liberal and social norms, particularly for women.

This is not an argument in favour of climate change. But it suggests that one cost-effective and beneficial form of climate adaptation spending would be helping people move, rather than preserving small farms in ever-harsher conditions.

There is another, more profound, example of the danger of climate groupthink. From the panels of Davos to the pages of newspapers, it is increasingly argued that no trade-off exists between the economic development of low - and middle-income countries and reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions.

This is partly because much of the rich world has successfully made some cuts in emissions while continuing to grow, and its leaders want more of the same.

But more crucially, it is because governments and development banks with limited budgets struggle to admit that not all their goals can be reconciled, and that they must therefore choose between them.

Yet choose they must, because the trade-off is in plain sight. Growth is the best way to to lift people out of poverty and improve average living standards.

But in the development world, more growth still leads to more emissions. Researchers at the IMF have found that in 72 developing countries since 1990, a 1% rise in annual GDP was on average associated with a 0.7% rise in emissions.

By 2030, fast-growing India and Indonesia alone will have increased their annual emissions by the equivalent of over 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide - an extra Germany's-worth of greenhouse-gas belching. In other big emerging markets such as Brazil, Egypt and the Philippines, emissions are rising, too.

Many rich-world leaders say they can square the circle by funding green development projects which, in theory, cut emissions and boost growth at the same time. That is true to a degree.

But, without adequate carbon-pricing and cross-border emissions trading to encourage the private sector to invest on its own initiative, it is an enormously expensive and fiendishly complex task.

On June 23rd, at the conclusion of a summit in Paris, rich countries again pledged to meet a target of providing $100 billion a year in ''climate finance'' to fund such projects.

Yet that is only a fraction of the $2.8 trillion annual investment thought to be needed by 2030 to put the developing world on a green growth path, at least $1 trillion of which probably needs to come from rich countries.

The reality of limited resources worsens the trade-off. The need to spend money decarbonising big developing economies that already offer citizens reasonable services threatens aid budgets which help pay for thinks like vaccines and schooling in the poorest parts of Africa.

Unlike Brazil or India, say, such nations are unlikely ever to contribute significantly to global emissions. 

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Green Growth and '' How misfiring environmentalism risks harming the world's poor '' continues. The World Students Society thanks The Economist.

With respectful dedication to Mankind, Leaders, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on !WOW! - the exclusive ownership of every student in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless