Climate Changed
UN Human Rights Expert Warns of ‘Climate Apartheid’ Scenario
- Decades of progress addressing poverty are in jeopardy
- `Best-case outcome' is undesirable and worst is unthinkable
Philip Alston speaks during a press conference at the United Nations' offices in Riyadh.
Photographer: FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images
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Climate change could undo 50 years of progress in fighting extreme poverty and threatens to create a “climate apartheid” in which the wealthy can escape the worst effects of extreme weather while the rest of the world is left to suffer, a United Nations expert warned.
“Perversely, while people in poverty are responsible for just a fraction of global emissions, they will bear the brunt of climate change, and have the least capacity to protect themselves,” Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said in a new report Tuesday.