ANU: Designing Just Institutions for Global Climate Governance

Stemming Climate Change and Eradicating

Poverty: Competing Imperatives?

Thomas Poggepantheon.yale.edu/~tp4

Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, Yale Universityand ANU Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)

Stemming Climate Change and Eradicating

Poverty: Competing Imperatives?

Thomas Poggepantheon.yale.edu/~tp4

Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, Yale Universityand ANU Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)

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The Human Magnitude of World Poverty

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Deprivations of PovertyAmong ca. 7 billion human beings, about

925 million are chronically undernourished (FAO 2010),

2000 million lack access to essential drugs (www.fic.nih.gov/about/plan/exec_summary.htm),

884 million lack safe drinking water (WHO/UNICEF 2008, 32),

924 million lack adequate shelter (UN Habitat 2003, p. vi),

1600 million have no electricity (UN Habitat, “Urban Energy”),

2500 million lack adequate sanitation (WHO/UNICEF 2008, p. 7),

796 million adults are illiterate (www.uis.unesco.org),

218 million children (aged 5 to 17) do wage work outside their household — often under slavery-like and hazardous conditions: as soldiers, prostitutes or domestic servants, or in agriculture, construction, textile or carpet production (ILO: The End of Child Labour, Within Reach, 2006, pp. 9, 11, 17-18).

   

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Millions of Deaths

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The “True Cost” of Fighting

Poverty5

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Causality -Pov +Pop

• Reductions in poverty increase human population as those who escape extreme poverty will enjoy longer lives. The effect is large, as about half of current annual poverty deaths (9 out of 18 million) are children under 5. If we enable these children to survive, most of them will reproduce (and thereby aggravate ecological burdens).

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Causality +Pop -Ecol• Climate change and ecological burdens

more generally (including depletion of non-renewable natural resources) are correlated with population. There is no reason to think that ecological footprint per person declines meaningfully with the number of persons. Therefore, more people means more rapid exhaustion of our planetary resources.

Conclusion: -Pov -Ecol 7

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Some Benefits of Fighting

Poverty8

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Causality -Pov +Ecol

• Dire need often compels very poor

people to act in environmentally

destructive ways for short-term benefit.

• Pro-poor policies and institutional

arrangements entail ecological benefits

insofar as economists are right to claim

that they “sacrifice” aggregate growth.

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Causality -Pov -Pop

• As Amartya Sen was the first to point out (NYRB

1994), there is a very high correlation between

poverty and total fertility rates. Since 1955, the

TFR has changed in East Asia from 5.42 to

1.72, in Portugal from 3.04 to 1.38, in

Australia from 3.18 to 1.83 – versus from

5.50 to 5.36 in Equatorial Guinea, from 6.23 to

5.49 in Mali, from 6.86 to 7.15 in Niger, and

from 5.52 to 5.22 in Sierra Leone.http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=2.

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Colombia Botswana Eq.Guinea Niger Singapore1950-1955 6.76 6.50 5.50 6.86 6.40

1955-1960 6.76 6.58 5.50 7.05 5.99

1960-1965 6.76 6.65 5.53 7.29 4.93

1965-1970 6.18 6.70 5.66 7.53 3.46

1970-1975 5.00 6.55 5.68 7.74 2.62

1975-1980 4.34 6.37 5.68 8.00 1.87

1980-1985 3.68 5.97 5.79 8.05 1.69

1985-1990 3.24 5.11 5.89 7.94 1.71

1990-1995 3.00 4.32 5.89 7.79 1.76

1995-2000 2.75 3.70 5.87 7.61 1.57

2000-2005 2.55 3.18 5.64 7.38 1.36

2005-2010 2.45 2.90 5.36 7.15 1.27

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-Pov -Pop continued• Currently, the total fertility rate is 4.39 for the 50

least developed countries versus 1.64 for the more developed regions, and 2.46 for the remaining middle-income countries http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=2

• Already 95 of the richer countries have reached TFRs below 2.00, half of countries below 2.20.

https://www.CIA.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html

Despite vastly higher mortality, the poor have rapid population growth, the better-off little or none.

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Rank country (children born/woman) Date of Information

1 Niger 7.68 2010 est.

2 Uganda 6.73 2010 est.

3 Mali 6.54 2010 est.

4 Somalia 6.44 2010 est.

5 Burundi 6.25 2010 est.

6 Burkina Faso 6.21 2010 est.

7 Congo, Democratic Republic of the 6.11 2010 est.

8 Ethiopia 6.07 2010 est.

9 Zambia 6.07 2010 est.

10 Angola 6.05 2010 est.

11 Congo, Republic of the 5.77 2010 est.

12 Malawi 5.51 2010 est.

13 Afghanistan 5.50 2010 est.

14 Benin 5.40 2010 est.

15 Mayotte 5.40 2010 est.

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Rank country (children born/woman) Date of Information

151 Kazakhstan 1.87 2010 est.

152 Aruba 1.85 2010 est.

153 Wallis and Futuna 1.84 2010 est.

154 Maldives 1.83 2010 est.

155 Saint Lucia 1.82 2010 est.

156 Virgin Islands 1.81 2010 est.

157 Mauritius 1.80 2010 est.

158 Saint Kitts and Nevis 1.79 2010 est.

159 Australia 1.78 2010 est.

160 Luxembourg 1.78 2010 est.

161 Lebanon 1.78 2010 est.

162 Norway 1.77 2010 est.

163 Algeria 1.76 2010 est.

164 Anguilla 1.75 2010 est.

165 Denmark 1.74 2010 est.

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Rank country (children born/woman) Date of Information

211 Slovenia 1.29 2010 est.

212 Moldova 1.28 2010 est.

213 Romania 1.27 2010 est.

214 Ukraine 1.27 2010 est.

215 Bosnia and Herzegovina 1.26 2010 est.

216 Belarus 1.25 2010 est.

217 Czech Republic 1.25 2010 est.

218 Montserrat 1.25 2010 est.

219 Lithuania 1.24 2010 est.

220 Korea, South 1.22 2010 est.

221 Japan 1.20 2010 est.

222 Taiwan 1.15 2010 est.

223 Singapore 1.10 2010 est.

224 Hong Kong 1.04 2010 est.

225 Macau 0.91 2010 est.

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Common Driver of Poverty and

Ecological Harm16

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Supranational Institutional Arrangements

are becoming increasingly influential (an aspect of globalization), and

are shaped in intergovernmental negotiations

- that lack transparency and accountability,

- while denying consideration to the input and interests of the vast majority of humanity

- and while affording enormous influence tothose corporations, industry associations, banks and other powerful agents who can lobby the principal governments. 17

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Systemic Problem: Regulatory Capture with Inequality Spiral

Often in concert, the richest players influence the rules and their application, thereby expanding their own advantage. Such run-away inequality strengthens, in each round, both the incentives and the opportunities for influence. Public facilities come under the influence of players with special and often near-term interests —who buy support from media and academics for this purpose (venality esp. of economists who live up to their homo oeconomicus paradigm).

Special interests have been effective in influencing especially international agreements (WTO Treaty) and organizations (WIPO, IMF, World Bank).

Segment of World

Population

Share of Global

Household Income

1988

Share of Global

Household Income

2005

Absolute Change in

Income Share

Relative Change in

Income Share

Richest Ventile 42.87 46.36 +3.49 +8.1%

Next Four Ventiles 46.63 43.98 -2.65 -5.7%Second Quarter 6.97 6.74 -0.23 -3.3%Third

Quarter 2.37 2.14 -0.23 -9.8%Poorest Quarter 1.15 0.77 -0.38 -32.9%

Data courtesy of Branko Milanovic   19

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Gathering Diverse Interests for

Reform20

Structural Reforms

Those with an interest safeguarding our

environment, in moderating inequality

and/or in reducing poverty should develop

global institutional reform ideas

that also appeal to the generic interest in

stability (in controlling regulatory capture)

and to specific interests in private gain.21

An Example of Reform

If inventors of green technologies are rewarded through patent-protected mark-ups, their inventions are bound to be underutilized.

Instead: offer to reward such inventors for a similar time period (15 years?) with payments proportional to the ecological harm their invention averts – on condition that they license and/or sell their invention at no more than, respectively, zero cost or the lowest feasible marginal cost of production. 22

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Two Different Adaptations

• Extension to pharmaceutical innovation: pay

pharmaceutical innovators for ten years based on

the global health impact of their new medicine

(www.healthimpactfund.org).

• Extension to agricultural innovation: pay

innovators on the basis of incremental nutrients

produced through use of their invention on the

fields where it is deployed.