Poor bear the brunt in an unfair world

July 15, 2024

NEW DELHI – Last year was certainly the hottest summer ever, according to the Scientific American. This summer is not yet over, but it certainly feels like it will break last year’s record. My air conditioning bill has gone up because the nights are hotter. Malaysia is having floods and landslides. India has a record heat wave with a stunning temperature of 52.3 degrees Celsius measured in the outskirts of New Delhi in May.

Flying into Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia this week, amidst the blue skies and lush green grasslands, I was made aware that the land-locked country suffered a 2.25 degrees Celsius increase in average temperature in the last 80 years, double the global average. Moreover, the number of natural disasters per year had risen from 2,400 per year during the period 1996- 2010 to 4,300 per year since 2010, a 1.8 fold increase. Climate warming is affecting Mongolia with the decline in precipitation causing drought, desertification and soil erosion or degradation. For a country of 3.3 million that accounted cumulatively for only 0.04 per cent of global carbon emission in 2022, it is suffering from global warming through external, rather than internal factors.

The severe current dzud or extreme cold and heat is estimated to have killed 5.2 million heads of livestock or 8.1 per cent of the total livestock in the country. You would have thought there would be some form of global insurance or aid for small countries that suffer from global warming through no fault of their own. The answer is that the multilateral agencies such as the World Bank or Asian Development Bank are trying their best, but according to the NGO International Budget Partnership, the constraints of Mongolia in meeting its UN