It's Now Possible to Grow Rich and Go Green
The long-held belief that developing countries can’t afford to decarbonize is starting to fall apart.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Photographer: Ruhani Kaur/BloombergFor five decades, international environmental meetings have been riven by a north-south divide.
While the rich nations of the global north have led calls to rein in emissions, their less affluent counterparts have largely remained on the sidelines. The Kyoto Protocol was in essence a treaty between the wealthy Group of Seven nations, the former Soviet Union, Australia and New Zealand. Even after the 2015 Paris Agreement brought developing countries into the greenhouse-target club for the first time, emissions from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development fell 2.7% in the four years to 2019, while those from lower-income nations grew 7.2%.