Why are developing nations more vulnerable to impacts?

Over the past couple of weeks this blog has focused on the social, economic and environmental impacts faced by developing countries as a result of climate change. The notion that developing countries endure the burden of the impacts instigated by climate change, even though they have not contributed as much to the change, was initially presented through Schelling (1992). Keeping that perception in mind, this week the aim of this post is to look at the regional dissimilarities of climate change impacts, and trying to understand why this is the case. It should be taken into deliberation that the aim of this post is to not debate what makes a developing country and what makes a developed one, but instead the aim is to try understand the variation of impact distribution.

It has been argued that as the years have gone by not much thought has gone into the regional variation of climate change impacts, with existing literature failing to acknowledge that some locations are likely to experience greater consequences (Nordhaus, 1991; Tol, 1995; Fankhauser, 1995; Pearce et al., 1996). Although models have been developed in the past attempting to forecast future changes, these models tend to presuppose that all parts of the world will experience the same climate change impacts due to the belief that temperature is on the rise globally. However, as we can see before our very own eyes, this has not been the case. Climate change is rapidly destroying agriculture and land used for cultivation – and it’s the developing countries that rely on this as a form of income, as previously mentioned. Recently, new research that has been undertaken has found fresh understandings as to how impacts vary (Mendelsohn and Neumann, 1999; McCarthy et al., 2001; Mendelsohn, 2001; Tol,2002). It is evident that many developed and rich countries are located in cooler parts of the globe, while the majority of developing nations are located in warmer regions, hence why they face greater climate change impacts. Thus the studies carried out found that for farmers in developed countries their agricultural business could grow as their location is cooler than optimum temperature meaning that a rise in temperature would actually be beneficial, whereas farmers in developing countries would face a decline in business as an already warm climate becomes even warmer (Mendelsohn et al 2006).

Mendelsohn et al indicated that if all nations had parallel climatic conditions primarily, then the impacts faced after would be shared out equally. However, all countries do not have the same initial climate – as we have established, developing nations are more likely to have a warmer climate to begin with due to their locations. The report has concluded that the main reason as to why developing nations face greater impacts is because they are situated in warm, low latitudinal regions. Developed countries on the other hand will most likely profit from climate change as they are typically situated in mid/high latitudinal areas therefore experiencing chilled temperatures (Mendelsohn et al 2006). 

So what does this mean for the future? Each country has many factors that could determine how they will be impacted by climate change. These factors range from population to GDP. The problem is that these characteristics are constantly changing and these changes mean that severity of impacts could increase. Nonetheless, ultimately the developing countries will endure the majority of the impacts from climate change. Although some developed countries will also experience some impacts, the damages will be incomparable to those faced in the poor regions. Mendelsohn et al even goes as far as concluding that the most affluent nations will in fact benefit.