1. Introduction
1.1 Background information
Climate change, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) (2007), is the long-term change of the weather statistics in which its averages are included. Across the decades, damages are not unseen that icebergs in arctic seas have been melting, inducing a concerning rising speed of sea water level and shorter interglacial periods (IPCC, 2013), thus threating the environment and well-being of living organisms. Climate change can be caused by natural and human factors. The Government of Canada (2015) concluded that from natural aspect, volcanic activities and solar radiation are some of the contributing factors to global warming, which is the major concern of climate change. Yet, they influence less than expected as the corresponding effects are relatively short-term and less influential. In contrast, human factor to which greenhouse effect can be attributed should be the major reason to global warming (The National Academies Press, 2010) because the human activities including gas emission, fossil fuel combustion and deforestation directly intensify the absorption of heat energy by greenhouse gases, escalating the atmospheric temperature and altering the climate.
1.2 Objective
Base on above, global obligations have been continually brought about by the global communities to alleviate the problem. Until now, over 90% of the counties has signed Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Commission on Climate Change(UNFCC), in view of achieving greenhouse gas emission reduction, which is defined as reduction of greenhouse gases under the Joint Implementation mechanism, in other words, 1 tone of equivalent CO2 decreased (UNFCC, 2010). Although means have been introduced, developing countries are always still suffering more damages than the developed one and have had various social responses induced, despite their less responsibility. This moral problem should be considered when distributing global obligations on emission reduction and this persuasion serves as the objective of the essay, with a view to alert global citizens the global responsibility of different countries and the importance of environmental protection. This essay focuses on the discussion about impacts of climate change to developed and developing countries, and corresponding mitigating measures to support why it should be considered into global obligation on emission reduction.
1.3 Overview
This essay first introduces the background information of climate change with respect to definition and causes. Effects of climate change on developed and developing countries are discussed in a multi dimension way and corresponding comparisons are made in the discussion in order to illustrate the greater suffer withstood by developing countries. Corresponding mitigating measures are followed to provide precedents and solutions to the issue. The conclusion includes restatement of my stance with summarization on arguments included.
2. Body
2.1 Impacts of climate change to developed and developing countries
According to O’Sullivan and Sheffrin (2003), developing countries refers to any sovereign state with low Human Develop Index and industrial base.
In terms of environmental impact, developing countries suffer more than developed countries because their coping ability with respect to climate change problem is less strong than that of developed countries’. Developing countries such as South Africa and India have less resources and education level to environmental protection, thus having shallower consciousness on the damages yielded from greenhouse gas including flooding and higher disease transmission rate (Patz, 2005). However, with global warming and corresponding climate change, the environment of developing countries is affected. That river and lower places are flooded due to higher sea level which is brought by melting of iceberg and leaching of soil stemming from higher precipitation of rain is some of the illustration of such effect, hence deteriorating citizens’ living environment and quality of life (Hirabayashi, 2013). However, their urban planning and facilities ranging from the technology on flood protection, water proof building development to rainwater drainage system are far under developed comparing with those in developed countries. Therefore, the developing society are easily devastated and damaged because the living environment in the places are easily influenced by climate. Thus, citizens’ home can be destroyed and economic can be depressed unexpectedly, creating strong social responses including poverty and homeless citizens, hence causing social disharmony which strongly deteriorating quality of life. On the contrary, those developed countries such as USA and Japan have higher degree of industrialization in which society development is more advanced, and have higher financial resource which evidenced by higher GDP per capita (UNCTAD, 2012). This means their urban development is more competent and alteration of environment does not influence their living and resource distribution to a very large extent as developed countries have sufficient capital and adaptability to cope with the environmental problems brought by climate change. Accordingly, this bring about smaller social influence. Hence, developing countries suffer greater environmental damage than that in developed countries and this should be considered in distributing global obligation.
In terms of public health aspect, developing countries are also suffering more influences and damages than developed countries do. Amid this, communicable diseases serve as one of the major causes. Transmission diseases are diseases caused by invasion of body tissues by pathogenic agents, which can be vector-borne (WHO, 2017). According to WHO (2016), vectors, mainly insects, can perform human-to-human or animal-to-human transmission of infectious diseases. Therefore, this indicates that insects, such as mosquitoes, are disease transmitting agents between the social communities. In fact, high environmental temperature favors the breeding of mosquito. Gills (2016) concluded that global warming has increased the range and rate of life cycle of mosquitoes, thus promoting the spread diseases. Zika Virus, Dangue Fever and Japanese encephalitis, which are extreme threatening to health, no named but just a few, are just part of the diseases transmitted by them. From the perspective from developing countries, like Brazil, they do not have enough resources and efficient ways to prevent the surge of mosquito population or such elimination, thus causing incontrollable increase in vector density. In this regard, more transmissions of infectious diseases among human in the community can be resulted. Evidence would be that a mosquito borne Zika virus disease, which deteriorates nervous system severely, had been an outbreak in Brazil, causing 1.5 million people infected (Boadle, 2016) and a total of 2,401 suspected cases of microcephaly in Brazil (Microcephaly Epidemic Research Group, 2016), and spread to South America with a stunning speed. From the high figure, it is observed that the influence on health is high. This indicates that the outbreak of transmission dealt a severe damage on public health condition and imposed health-threatening risk on citizens of developing countries. In contrast, facing the same problem, America collaborated with medical professionals of other countries from developed countries to invent new vaccine to fight against Zika virus. Because of the resourceful investment and advanced technology possessed by those developed countries, they efficiently invented vaccines and antitoxins to treat their local Zika-infected-patients in advance before allocating the treatment solutions to developing countries with a view to halting the spread of disease, while the Brazil’s outbreak had been an incontrollable trauma. This illustrates that vector borne communicable diseases which are brought by climate change possess the ability to impose stronger damage to public health of developing countries than to developed countries because developed countries can utilize such higher development of technology and more resource to immediately tackle the problem, preventing public health from threatens. However, with scarce resource and underdevelopment, developing countries can only seek help from developed countries or deal with climate change problem inefficiently. Therefore, developing countries suffer from a greater damage on public health aspect and this should be considered in negotiating global obligations with other nations.
2.2 Corresponding mitigating measures
Both developing and developed countries’ have responsibility with respect to the environment because they both contribute to the global warming. Thus, mitigation measures must be taken to have the situation alleviated and future environment safeguarded.
In terms of national scale, countries can set up national emission standard internally to regulate the emission of herself. Some developing countries have been undergoing industrialization or economic restructuring by which such countries strengthen their national power and achieve successful urbanization for future development. Such carbon emission from secondary production and fossil combustion is unavoidable to meet the energy demand. However, with technological advance and scientific research, internal regulations on production emission have already been introduced by many developing countries during their developing phase. A good example would be that China, the greatest gas emitting country, has scheduled by 2020 all light vehicles to oblige new Chine IV emission standard with catalytic converter installed to reduce carbon emission, which is nearly equivalent to the Euro 5b standard, and promised to initiatively reduce 60% pollution emission by 2030 in the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (UNCCC) (Environment Bureau, 2015). This represents that some developing countries has put effort to initiatively reduce their greenhouse gas emission to the globe, developing an internal standard to regulate subordinate environmental pollution. This type of internal regulation can be regard of a stepping stone to the progress on further environmentally protecting measure, including carbon and greenhouse gas emission. This measure is effective to deal with the social response mentioned above. As mentioned, social disharmony and deteriorated quality of life could occur with climate change. With internal regulation, in national aspect, the environmental pollution due to greenhouse gas contamination can be eliminated and the air quality can be escalated instantly, preventing regional climate change within a short time. Therefore, some damage such as acid rain and leaching of soil can be prevented, providing a betterment on living environment. Thus, environmental and social quality of life can be reinforced, fostering social harmony. It is seen that developing countries has put concerted efforts in internal gas emission monitoring with lesser resource. Hence, with greater suffer mentioned and with scarce national capital they possess, developing countries should bear the lesser responsibility and this ought to be considered in global obligation discussion.
Apart from this, in terms of global scale, stronger international agreement can be signed to achieve an official obligation between developing and developed countries, and to provide a platform for states to monitor each other, achieving a concrete effectiveness on climate change coping. For instance, in UNCCC 2015, all contracting nations approved and signed Paris Agreement, a legally bound agreement to oblige participating nations to keep the global average temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperature, for the sake of climate change mitigation (UNFCCC, 2015). This ensure the presence of common goal among developing and developed countries, facilitating the global emission reduction efficiency with concerted effort and clear objective on climate change prevention by greenhouse gas emission reduction. As a result, countries are monitored and collaborated mutually in emission reduction, catalyzing the protection of environment. Furthermore, the high effectiveness can also be illustrated by reassuring the abovementioned concerns. With reinforced global communication and collaboration of climate problem, the exchange of information, technological development and resource allocation can be more efficiently. Accordingly, in the long run, international support can slow down the climate change and the problems brought including global health risk and economic crisis. Although developing countries are regarded as the major greenhouse gas releasing origin, many of them ranging from China, South Africa to Vietnam (United Nations Treaty Collection, 2015) have signed such treaties to demonstrate their willingness and determination to climate change alleviation and international cooperation. In this way, they should have smaller responsibility.
3. Conclusion
In conclusion, developing countries are less responsible for climate change but stand to suffer greater damage in environmental and public health aspect. It is thus concluded that this fact should be considered when distributing global obligations on emission reduction. Internal regulations and international treaties are some mitigating measures.