An Unequal World

 

Inequality contributes to the deaths of at least 21,300 people each day—or one person every four seconds. 

This is a “highly conservative estimate” for deaths resulting from hunger, lack of access to healthcare and climate breakdown in poor countries.

Oxfam outlines the fact that the climate crisis is one of the most harmful drivers of inequality.

Since the covid pandemic began, a new billionaire has been created every 26 hours. The world’s small elite of 2,755 billionaires has seen its fortunes grow more during Covid-19 than they have in the whole of the last fourteen years combined, says Oxfam in its report about inequality.

“This is the biggest annual increase since records began. It is taking place on every continent.”

It is enabled by skyrocketing stock market prices, a boom in unregulated entities, a surge in monopoly power and privatisation, alongside the erosion of individual corporate tax rates and workers’ rights and wages.

“Over the past two years, people have died when they contracted an infectious disease because they did not get vaccines in time. They have died of other illnesses because they could not afford private care. They have died of hunger because they could not afford to buy food…And while they died, the richest people in the world got richer than ever and some of the largest companies made unprecedented profits.”

“The climate crisis affects us all, but it doesn’t affect us equally. The richest 1% of people in the world, about 63 million people, are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.”

Since 2000, the UN estimates that 1.23 million people have died and 4.2 billion have been affected by droughts, floods and wildfires. We all suffer from a heating planet when rich countries fail to address the effects of their responsibility for an estimated 92% of all excess historic emissions.”

The number of climate-related disasters has tripled in 30 years, with currently one extreme weather event recorded per week.

Last year, Oxfam reports, the world saw a record 50 billion US dollars worth of damages from extreme weather disasters exacerbated by climate change, pushing nearly 16 million people in 15 countries to crisis levels of hunger.

“People in low-and lower-middle-income countries are around five times more likely than people in high-income countries to be displaced by sudden extreme weather disasters.”

Destructive weather, rising seas, unprecedented fires and historic famines. “Climate change is happening now. It is one of the most harmful drivers of worsening hunger, migration, poverty and inequality all over the world.”

“In recent years, already with 1°C of global heating, there have been deadly cyclones in Asia and Central America, huge locust swarms across Africa.”

Inequality is not an abstract issue, affirms Oxfam  “It has devastating, real-world consequences... It is rigged into our economic systems and is tearing our societies apart.”

According to a World Bank’s report, four out of five people below the international poverty line still live in rural areas, and half of the poor are children. Women also represent a majority of the poor in most regions and among some age groups.

Of the global poor aged 15 and older, about 70% have no schooling or only some basic education.

And more than 40% of the global poor live in economies affected by conflict and violence, and, in some economies, most of the poor are concentrated in specific subnational areas. About 132 million of the global poor live in areas with high flood risk.

Inequality Kills One Person Every Four Seconds | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)