The rich world’s climate distraction
Development must focus on the best ways to help the poor, who are more vulnerable to everything, not just climate change.
The rich world's attention on climate change has become a significant distraction from its development efforts, according to an article. Over the past seven decades, human welfare has seen remarkable improvement, with extreme poverty declining from more than half of humanity in 1950 to just 7.6 percent today. However, progress in development has slowed to its slowest pace since 1950, with the number of poor people remaining stagnant since 2016, as reported by the World Bank.
The shift in focus from development goals to climate change became evident with the retirement of the Millennium Development Goals in 2016, which aimed to cut poverty, disease, and maternal and child deaths, and ensure every child received an education. The Sustainable Development Goals replaced these, with climate change emerging as the primary concern for the rich world.
This obsession is evident in the allocation of development aid funds, where a quarter of all development commitments in the rich world are now spent on climate change.
Global development banks are spending half their development money on climate, amounting to around $103 billion for low- and middle-income countries. While it may seem logical that poor people are more vulnerable to climate change, leading to climate policy being crucial for development, this line of reasoning is flawed. The author argues that this shift in priorities is misguided and has negatively impacted development efforts.
The conclusion is clear: the rich world must refocus its attention on development, rather than being consumed by climate change.
Written by urgent.news from The Jakarta Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
