[Reuters] Who Should Bear the Cost of Climate Change?

This morning, UNHCR continued their debate on the question of who should bear the cost of climate change. 

The conversation revealed two parallel failures: a legal framework that leaves climate refugees without protection, and a burden-sharing logic that asks the least responsible to pay an equal price. Until both are addressed, the gap between international law and climate justice will only widen. 

Pakistan's primary proposal was to expand the 1951 Refugee Convention to include climate-displaced persons. Under the current framework, refugees falling within the Convention's scope cannot be returned to their home state where they face serious threats to their life or freedom on grounds of religion, race, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a particular social group. 

Climate-displaced persons, by contrast, benefit from no equivalent legal protection. Unlike Convention refugees, they are not entitled to labor rights, access to education, or access to courts, and they may be penalized by host States for irregular entry, leaving them among the most legally vulnerable populations in the world. The United States vetoed this convention expansion arguing that it already accepted too many refugees which led to a decline in national security and job losses for Americans. 

In 2022, Pakistan experienced a devastating flood that affected over 33 million individuals across the country. It forced eight million to flee their homes, killed nearly 2,000 people, and left 20 million civilians in need of basic humanitarian assistance. 

The Pakistani representative argued that this crisis was predominantly caused by the Global North and proposed that they should compensate the Global South for climate related issues. 

Somalia seconded this notion of cost sharing, arguing that development of the Global North countries could not have been achieved without colonisation and the delocalization of industries and pollution problems into the Global South. Costa Rica reinforces this argument by highlighting that the United Kingdom relocated its most polluting industries to developing countries, which now bear the environmental and economic cost of that activity. 

In response, the UK replied that it is already one of the highest climate change contributors and calls for each state to have the same contribution.

 As the delegate of Colombia well pointed out however, its global share of CO2 emissions are only 0.4% and the one of Costa Rica 0.1% while Chinese shares rises to 35% and the one of the US to 12.64%, which are significantly higher numbers.

Can equal responsibility truly exist where contribution to the crisis has never been equal? 

States went on to discuss whether compensation should be about personal fault or about who has the necessary funds. Bangladesh highlighted that it was unfair for an entire country to bear the taxes of the small number of industries that are the one polluting. It proposed for costs to be left to industries instead of citizens.