A Most Heinous -Yet Unprosecuted- Crime: Inequality
"Without concerted efforts, billions face a future marked by hunger, displacement, and economic decline." Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS
By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 17 2024 (IPS)
Planet Earth is drying up, relentlessly. Over three-quarters of all lands have become permanently drier in the last three decades. This is not jut a statistic but a stark scientific fact. But while such an ‘existential crisis’ affects nearly every region, guess where -and who- are the most hit?
They are the 1.35 billion humans living in Asia’s drylands, that’s more than half the global total. And they are the 620 millions people who inhabit Africa’s drylands, e.g. nearly half of the continent’s population.
The above are some of the key findings of worldwide scientific research elaborated by the Bonn-based UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
A Human-Perpetrated Crime
The report by UNCCD Science-Policy Interface (SPI) — the UN body for assessing the science of land degradation and drought — points to human-caused climate change as the primary driver of this shift.
“Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, transport, industry and land use changes warm the planet and other human activities warm the planet and affect rainfall, evaporation and plant life, creating the conditions that increase aridity.”
According to the world’s scientific community, aridity is considered one of the world’s five most important causes of land degradation (along with land erosion, salinization, organic carbon loss and vegetation degradation).
Drylands Expending at an Alarming Rate
The overarching trend, however, is clear: drylands are expanding, pushing ecosystems and societies to suffer from aridity’s life-threatening impacts.
The report names South Sudan and Tanzania as nations with the largest percentage of land transitioning to drylands, and China as the country experiencing the largest total area shifting from non-drylands into drylands.
Billions Living in Expanding Drylands
For the 2.3 billion people – well over 25% of the world’s population – living in the expanding drylands, this new normal requires lasting, adaptive solutions. Aridity-related land degradation, known as desertification, represents a dire threat to human well-being and ecological stability, warns the research.
“And as the planet continues to warm, report projections in the worst-case scenario suggest up to 5 billion people could live in drylands by the century’s end, grappling with depleted soils, dwindling water resources, and the diminishment or collapse of once-thriving ecosystems.”
A Billion Climate Forced Migrants
Nearly a decade ago, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that the number of climate migrants and refugees could be estimated to reach one billion in the coming decades.
Now, according to the scientific findings, forced migration is one of aridity’s most visible consequences.
“As land becomes uninhabitable, families and entire communities facing water scarcity and agricultural collapse often have no choice but to abandon their homes, leading to social and political challenges worldwide.”
From the Middle East to Africa and South Asia, millions are already on the move—a trend set to intensify in coming decades.
“Without concerted efforts, billions face a future marked by hunger, displacement, and economic decline,” warns Nichole Barger, Chair, UNCCD Science-Policy Interface.
Total Impunity for Polluters
According to the European Union (EU) the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) is a simple idea at the core of EU environmental policy: those responsible for environmental damage should pay to cover the costs.
“This applies to prevention of pollution, remediation, liability (criminal, civil and environmental liability) and the costs imposed on society of pollution that does happen.”
Such PPP has been too far away from being applied, rather: it has been systematically denied.
The most recent evidence of such denial is the outcome of the Baku, Azerbaijan’s climate summit (COP29).
A “Global Ponzi Scheme”
Perhaps one of the clearest evidence is what the world’s coalition to fight inequality: OXFAM International, stated at the end of the Baku meeting.
Responding to the COP29 climate finance agreement, in which rich countries agree to mobilize $300 billion a year to help Global South countries cope with warming temperatures and switch to renewable energy, Oxfam International’s Climate Change Policy Lead, Nafkote Dabi, said:
“The terrible verdict from the Baku climate talks shows that rich countries view the Global South as ultimately expendable, like pawns on a chessboard…
… The $300 billion so-called ‘deal’ that poorer countries have been bullied into accepting is unserious and dangerous —a soulless triumph for the rich, but a genuine disaster for our planet and communities who are being flooded, starved, and displaced today by climate breakdown….
And as for promises of future funding? They’re just as hollow as the deal itself.”
The real PPP: “The Poor Pays Principle”
“The money on the table is not only a pittance in comparison to what’s really needed –it’s not even real “money”, by and large, warns OXFAM.
“Rather, it’s a motley mix of loans and privatized investment –a global Ponzi scheme that the private equity vultures and public relations people will now exploit.”
The destruction of our planet is avoidable, but not with this shabby and dishonorable deal. The richest polluters need to wise up —and pay up.”
No way, rather…
Did you know that billionaires emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average person does in a lifetime.
The scientific findings show that aridity impacts vast areas of the rich Western powers – those who most contaminate.
All the above goes far beyond semantics: when it comes to the polluters, they talk just about money. But when it comes to the polluted, it is about devastation, diseases… and death.