Developing nations are least responsible for climate change but cop it worst. Will the COP29 climate talks tackle this injustice?

Since the Industrial Revolution, country after country has turned to fossil fuels to power their transport and industry.

Now the bill is coming due. Huge volumes of long-buried carbon are in the atmosphere, warming the planet. Climate disasters are arriving more often and getting worse.

But the pain from climate change is not distributed fairly. Developing nations are suffering the worst, despite emitting far fewer greenhouse gases. To date, two regions – Europe and North America – have contributed fully 60% of the world’s total emissions. This has made them much richer, but at a cost borne largely by those of us in the Global South.

This injustice will be in the spotlight this week, as leaders and diplomats gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the yearly United Nations climate talks. Climate finance is high on the agenda – specifically, the vexed question of who pays.

Who is responsible for climate change?

Historically, North America and Europe are the highest emitters.

Asia’s emissions have grown sharply in recent decades, due to its high population size, sustained economic growth in China and high emitting, oil-reliant Gulf states.

By contrast, Africa and South America are each only responsible for 3% of the world’s total emissions over time.

This is a necessarily simplistic picture. It hides, for instance, which companies and organisations emitted most in Europe and North America, as well as which income groups emit most.

But even at this level, it is increasingly clear the wealthiest people in the world are the highest emitters – including the rich who live in the Global South.

This unequal distribution of emissions gave rise to the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” in international environmental law in the 1990s.

This phrase speaks to the common responsibility to tackle climate change, the fact some nations have contributed less to the problem and some much more, and that some can respond more easily to the threat.

The idea was first articulated in the 1992 Rio Declaration on sustainable development. It was featured in the 1996 Kyoto Protocol on climate change and the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Pain for the poor

Until very recently, economic growth went hand in hand with using ever more fossil fuels.

The problem is the benefits were localised (an industry booms, a country gets wealthier), the environmental cost was deferred until later, and the damage would be borne more widely.

If fast-growing countries like Ethiopia, and Indonesia took the same route, climate change would get even worse and the world would blow through its shrinking carbon budget.

This is just one of many cruel twists of fate. As the damage done by climate change intensifies, developing countries have to spend more of their budgets on maintaining the status quo – repairing broken bridges, keeping farmers afloat – and less on improving the lives of their citizens.

Climate change also poses major financial risks to developing nations. To cope with more and worse disasters, governments have to borrow more. More of their budgets have to go towards servicing debt, leaving less for everything else.

Right now, millions are going hungry in southern Africa, after an unprecedented drought devastated crops. Zimbabwe has lost 80% of its crops, Zambia 70%.

In 2022, catastrophic floods in Pakistan forced almost 8 million people to leave their homes and forced another 20 million to seek immediate humanitarian aid.

These disasters are bad enough. But they can also disrupt national climate efforts. The hydroelectric Kariba Dam has long provided low-carbon power to Zambia and Zimbabwe. But the water level has dropped sharply due to the drought. In September, the dam stopped generating electricity – and brought power cuts across both nations. In response, the governments have looked to solar and even coal.