The Dubai climate summit, known as COP28, is already underway. An assessment is made of what has been done so far and emergencies abound. You look ahead and more challenges arise. It is complex to even make an agreed, voluntary fund effective to pay for the damage caused by the climate crisis in poor countries.
Climate vulnerability (which speaks of climate crisis but also institutional crisis, resources and more) in the so-called global South is crossed by debts and dependencies that today condition everything, they come from behind, they look far away.
And it is generally known that the most polluting countries are the most industrialized countries. The US and China stand out. And Russia. Also several European countries. Or Japan. But neither the Chinese leader Xi Jinping nor the American Joe Biden will go to the Emirates. Nor would their countries be among the most vulnerable to the climate.
On the contrary, all of Africa is vulnerable. And all of Latin America. Almost all of Asia, according to the renowned The Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative, is based on six sectors that are understood to sustain life: food, water, health, the ecosystem, human habitat and infrastructure.
The map takes into account the economic capacity, governance and social structure of each country based on data collected – among others – by the United Nations. If we subtract from this their exposure to problems in the previous six areas, their sensitivity towards them, or the ability to confront them, the result in this global South is clear: it is urgent to act.
Problem: the development of commitments made at previous climate summits is lacking; resources are lacking; and those already established are often volunteers. But the dependencies in the meantime grow. And they also condition what is allocated against the climate crisis.
For example, because the external debt was and continues to be there.
In Latin America, according to data from the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, two heavyweights such as Argentina and Venezuela stand out – beyond the effect that the return of Caracas to the world crude oil market and the dollarization that the Argentine president-elect, Javier Milei, may have. , wants for the country.
But it is also abundant in Africa from east to west and from north to south. For example, in Senegal, Nigeria, Congo-Kinshasa, Kenya, Mozambique. Or in the Middle East in Iraq.
And to all this is added a geopolitical complexity: more than a quarter of the debt of several countries is in the hands of Beijing or in those of the Paris Club, which brings together Western countries and Russia.
The clearest example is given by one of the few cases that stand out for their debt in Asia, Pakistan, which is key in the New Chinese Silk Road and that breaks the circle of countries that surround Beijing and that are NATO allies. . More than 25% of its debt depends on the Asian Giant.
And the same thing happens to central countries in essential raw materials for 21st century technology like Congo-Brazzaville. Or those that by location are at the epicenter of East-West trade, such as Djibouti on the Red Sea, and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. Or those through which you can circumnavigate Africa like Comoros. Or those that serve to put a flag in the Pacific like Toga and Samoa.
The debt financed by China conditions its decisions, whether it can be paid or not.
That 25% or more for the Paris Club barely happens in Afghanistan today, now under the Taliban. In Zambia, for its part, it happens twice as its debt depends on both China and the Paris Club countries.
All of them key places in the spheres of geopolitical influence. Both are, to a large extent, precisely for this reason?, places where political instability predominates.
And here even a source of wealth like oil often doesn't seem to help. Only the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) have their own clear and growing voice. The expansion of the group to add Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2024 remains to be seen if it is a sign that something is changing.
Because so far not even continental unity in organizations such as the African Union or the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States has ended up giving strength and voice to the global South. Organizations, moreover, that are often later distorted by coexisting with many other intra-regional ones, all of them historically very exposed to internal political changes in each country.
The ups and downs of Mercosur with the Jair Bolsonaro/Lula changes in Brazil highlight this.
