Poverty vs climate - Bangkok Post
Re: “The rich world’s distraction”, (Opinion, October 24).
A recently published opinion article argues that the shift towards fighting against climate change is a distraction from the focus on poverty reduction. This is a disingenuous argument with implications that would be disastrous for billions of people around the world, including in Thailand.
It is indeed true that progress on the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is lacking, but the causes are much more complex than the simplistic misrepresentation of development versus climate.
One could even argue that it is the increasingly visible consequences of climate change, for example more intense droughts and floods leading to weaker agricultural yields or to the destruction of infrastructure, that are undermining progress on development.
But the more significant reason for this is the gradual decline in Official Development Assistance over the past years combined with the disastrous long-term consequences of the Covid pandemic. These are structural issues that need to be collectively addressed.
To frame development and climate as somehow being in conflict is a misunderstanding of how development projects work.
Treating these issues as being separate reduces the effectiveness of these projects, which is why the European Union mandates climate mainstreaming to be part of all its development projects around the world, thereby preventing negative externalities and improving climate mitigation and adaptation.
Additionally, authors underplay the severity of climate disasters by claiming that a hurricane “merely inconveniences wealthy Florida”. In 2024, Hurricane Helene caused damages worth US$78.7 billion (2.66 trillion baht) according to official US government figures. That’s a pricey inconvenience.
It is striking that despite a wealth of misleading and out-of-context statistics, the authors fail to mention the following one: that by 2050, the cost of climate change damage worldwide is estimated to be between $1.7 trillion and $3.1 trillion annually, and the impacts of climate change could reduce Thailand’s GDP by 7-14%.
Of course, this inconvenient truth is well known to fossil fuel interests who are trying their best to underplay the seriousness of the situation.
As a Member of the European Parliament, I am currently working on the Global Europe Instrument — the EU’s proposal for a new 200-billion-euro (7.52 billion baht) foreign and development policy fund, which will require climate mainstreaming and a fixed percentage of projects to support climate mitigation and adaptation. The fight against poverty and fossil fuel interests needs to go hand in hand, and the EU is ready to work with partners and allies around the world.
