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Poor nations to bear brunt as world warms NO.94

Poor nations to bear brunt as world warms

¡¡¡¡The world's richest countries, which have contributed by far the most to the atmospheric changes linked to global warming, are already spending billions of dollars to limit their own risks from its worst consequences, like drought and rising seas.

¡¡¡¡But despite longstanding treaty commitments to help poor countries deal with warming, these industrial powers are spending just tens of millions of dollars on ways to limit climate and coastal hazards in the world's most vulnerable regions-most of them close to the equator and overwhelmingly poor.

¡¡¡¡Next Friday, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that since 1990 has been assessing global warming, will underline this growing climate divide, according to scientists involved in writing it-with wealthy nations far from the equator not only experiencing fewer effects but also better able to withstand them.

¡¡¡¡Twoª²thirds of the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide, a heatª²trapping greenhouse gas that can persist in the air for centuries, has come in nearly equal proportions from the United States and Western European countries. Those and other wealthy nations are investing in windmillª²powered plants that turn seawater to drinking water, in flood barriers and floatable homes, and in grains and soybeans genetically altered to flourish even in a drought.

¡¡¡¡In contrast, Africa accounts for less than 3 percent of the global emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning since 1900, yet its 840 million people face some of the biggest risks from drought and disrupted water supplies, according to new scientific assessments. As the oceans swell with water from melting ice sheets, it is the crowded river deltas in southern Asia and Egypt, along with small island nations, that are most at risk.

¡¡¡¡"Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic," said Henry I. Miller, a fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheaper decks were lost. We'll see the same phenomenon with global warming."

¡¡¡¡"The inequity of this whole situation is really enormous if you look at who's responsible and who's suffering as a result," said Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations climate panel. In its most recent report, in February, the panel said that decades of warming and rising seas were inevitable with the existing greenhouseª²gas buildup, no matter what was done about cutting future greenhouse gas emissions.

¡¡¡¡Many other experts insist this is not an eitherª²or situation. They say that cutting the vulnerability of poor regions needs much more attention, but add that unless emissions are curbed, there will be centuries of warming and rising seas that will threaten ecosystems, water supplies, and resources from the poles to the equator, harming rich and poor.