Low-income countries suffer more from global warming

The global warming It does not impact all countries uniformly, but the lower-income countries suffer more from the ravages of the change in temperature, they revealed at the “ITAM Economic Perspectives Seminar: plurality and contrasts in trends for 2023”.

“Climate change will affect different regions of the world, different parts of the economy. This will imply that there will be winners and losers, some places will have better results in the face of climate change (…) and some will have the worst”, said Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, alumnus of the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), at the Master Conference on Climate Change.

In a report, prepared by the itamite, it has been revealed that the world could lose 6% of well-being on average as a consequence of global warming. However, by 2200, the welfare loss would be 10% on average.

While the poorest regions of the world, located mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, are the ones that will suffer the greatest losses from climate change.

Rossi-Hansberg commented in his presentation that in order to prevent the ravages of climate change it is necessary to design public policies that take into account adaptation, and not only prevention, in all places and economic sectors, but particular attention must be paid to migration.

“The adaptation has to find two crucial points. The first is migration, about 600 million people will migrate or move to other places as a result of climate change in the next 150 years, which is a large number. A big problem and with this is that the reaction is going to be to close the borders and make migration more restrictive”, said the also associate researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER, for its acronym in English). Rossi-Hansberg commented that if migration is a problem and if we are going to see more restrictions, then trade is the substitute for migration.

Ultimately, the best way to adapt to global warming is for people to migrate to regions that lose less or even gain from rising temperatures. Many of these regions are currently sparsely populated, due to their lack of amenities and productivity, but could improve as temperatures rise and new migrants invest in them over the next few centuries, the document details.

santiago.renteria@eleconomista.mx

kg