Could Climate Change be a great opportunity for the Developing World?

On the face of it, climate change looks like it will disproportionately affect the developing world more than the rich northern countries. Predictions are that vast areas of Bangladesh will be subjected to even more severe, or even permanent, flooding. More of Africa will become desert, and, in one of the predictions I was most surprised by, the Amazon basin will become savannah. Each of these, set alongside hotter summers in southern Europe, and milder, drier winters in England, seem to suggest that the developing world will suffer more than we will, through increased poverty, competition for water and farmland, and local environmental issues.

So it’s an odd premise that climate change could be looked at as an opportunity. Yet, climate change, “the defining issue of our age” as various pundits have called it, could be the first event that will unequivocally affect every single person on the planet. Hotter summers, wetter winters and the reduction in food-growing capability around the world, as well as rising sea levels, will affect us all, rich or poor, north or south. Wherever we are, if the climate change predictions come true, we will have to adapt and this will affect our economies, our politics, our lives in every way. If everyone is affected, then everyone has a stake in solving the problem.

Perhaps I’m being overly optimistic, in the face of all historical evidence, but this could be our opportunity to come together and devise not just a solution to climate change, but to all the other issues that are intrinsically linked – the issues of local environmental degradation, crushing poverty, unfair trade rules & deregulation. In the same way that climate change will affect us all, regardless of national boundaries or income bracket, so the solutions will benefit us all. We can, in essence, use climate change to build that better world.