Global Environmental Change and Global Inequality

Global environmental change (GEC) carries serious implications for developing countries and for North/South relations. The article argues that global inequalities need to be understood against the background of structural adjustment and indebtedness that characterized the 1980s. Environmental policy priorities are largely concerned with livelihood sustainability in the South, rather than the longer-term risks usually associated with GEC. However, the `global' agenda of climate change, biodiversity loss and deforestation is intimately linked to the everyday livelihood concerns of poor people in developing countries. Looked at from the perspective of the South there are serious difficulties in agreeing to take measures to reduce atmospheric emissions when the `problem' was not one of their making. The authors conclude that, for this reason alone, a real global contract will need to address underlying `development' issues, principally poverty, before the global concerns of the North can be successfully met.