(Bloomberg) -- Climate change could undo 50 years of progress in fighting extreme poverty and threatens to create a “climate apartheid” in which the wealthy can escape the worst effects of extreme weather while the rest of the world is left to suffer, a United Nations expert warned.
“Perversely, while people in poverty are responsible for just a fraction of global emissions, they will bear the brunt of climate change, and have the least capacity to protect themselves,” Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said in a new report Tuesday.
Even if the best-case scenario of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius occurs, many people around the globe will still see droughts, floods, food insecurity, malnutrition, health problems and lost income opportunities, Alston warned. For impoverished people who live in those areas, they will have to choose between starving or migrating, he said.
“We have reached a point where the best-case outcome is widespread death and suffering by the end of this century, and the worst case puts humanity on the brink of extinction,” he said in the report.
Alston, an Australian legal scholar and human rights expert who formerly taught at New York University’s School of Law, became the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in 2014 but has been working with the UN for 20 years. While he has previously warned of health and environmental threats in impoverished communities, this is his first report on the vast effects of climate change. The 21-page paper will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on Friday.
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