The world’s richest 0.1% produce more pollution than the 3.5 billion people who are the planet’s poorest combined, according to an Oxfam analysis released today ahead of COP31 in Turkey.
According to the international confederation of organizations against poverty and inequality, the 0.1% wealthiest amount to eight million people, and each of them contributed almost 400 times more to the current bouts of extreme heat than someone belonging to the bottom 50% of humanity.
Collectively, this group emits more than three times the greenhouse gas pollution produced by the entire population of Sub-Saharan Africa, estimated at 1.3 billion people.
Oxfam also calculated that the top 1% are responsible for 20% of global warming recorded since 1990, emitting, on average, 100 times more per person than someone in the bottom 50%.
The emissions from this group could cause 1.9 million additional heat-related deaths in a single year, 78% of which in low-income or lower-middle-income countries, even though these countries account for only 8% of global emissions.
“Those who contributed the least to this crisis are losing their homes, crops and, increasingly, their lives,” lamented Oxfam International’s Executive Director, Amitabh Behar, quoted in a statement.
Oxfam argues that the super-rich can protect themselves through private insurance, housing in safer areas and private firefighting services, while the vast majority of the population faces floods, fires and food insecurity.
Private aviation is presented as one of the most evident examples of inequality: collectively, private jets emit more greenhouse gases in two seconds than a person in the bottom 50% emits in a year.
In the study titled “Destroy and Rebuild Index,” Oxfam calls on governments meeting in November in Antalya, Turkey, at the 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) to make the big polluters pay, through permanent wealth taxes and high-income taxes, taxes on fossil fuel companies and taxes on luxury goods that produce many greenhouse gases, such as private jets.
The organization also advocates substantial increases in climate financing for the Global South, with priority given to public funding and subsidies rather than loans, and asks that adaptation funding be tripled by 2035.
Oxfam estimates that by 2050, about a billion people, roughly 10% of the world population, could be displaced due to the climate crisis, especially in the Global South.
