Instant Genius - How climate change impacts the world’s most vulnerable people

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

When think about climate change, we may think about global temperatures escalating, extreme weather events occurring more and more and sea levels rising. But what effect is all of this actually having on the everyday lives of the world’s population, especially those that are most vulnerable? In this episode, we speak to Dr Friederike Otto about her latest book Climate Injustice: Why We Need to Fight Global Inequality to Combat Climate Change. She tells us how facts and evidence and are vital if we want to combat the effects of climate change on the world’s poorest populations, how the historical effects of inequality are deeply ingrained in the issue, and why the future doesn’t have to be as bleak as some may say. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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When we think about climate change, we may think about global temperatures escalating, extreme weather events occurring more and more, and sea levels rising. But what effect is this actually having on the everyday lives of the world's population, especially those that are most vulnerable? In this episode, we speak to Dr Federico Otto about her latest book, climate injustice, why we need to fight global inequality to combat climate change. She tells us how facts and evidence are vital if we want to combat the effects of climate change on the world's poorest populations, how the historical effects of inequality are deeply

ingrained in the issue, and why the future doesn't have to be as bleak as some may say. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. So today we're talking about your book, Climate Injustice, why we need to fight global inequality to combat climate change. So we're going to go through a lot of different things here. But I think first off, let's just get out of the way. What is the current situation, sort of atmospherically, temperature rise, environmentally speaking,

about climate change, because people talk about the 1.5 degrees, the 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. You know, where are we at? So that already is not such an easy question, because it depends a bit on how you measure it, which the Paris Agreement actually doesn't say how exactly we should measure 1.5 degrees, because actually, if you just look at a single year, we're at 1.6 degree at the moment. So the last year was 1.6 degrees above the pre-industrial level. but it's usually assumed or agreed that what the Paris Agreement talks about is more like a five to ten year sort of stable level. And in that we are at the moment at 1.3 degrees. And we have seen hurricanes, heat waves, extreme flooding around the world droughts,

almost all of them are now more intense and more frequent because of climate change. And that's only at 1.3. And with the current policies that are implemented, we will end up somewhere between 2.4 and 3.2 degrees by the end of the century. So we're not even close to what we were hoping to achieve with the Paris Agreement. So the reason I asked about those numbers is because often when you read about things like this or things are reported like this, they just talk about the numbers and not really the effects. So your book talks about the effect of climate change and, as you say, the increasing frequency and intensity of these extreme weather events on different populations around the world, which is a new one on me, really. So what led you to this topic?

Well, actually, I mean, my work brought me to this topic, but the reason why I thought I should. should write this up as a book was my students, because every time I teach about the Paris Agreement and tell students that the Paris Agreement is a human rights treaty, and that it says in the preamble that the reason why we set up this Paris Agreement is because we need to safeguard some very basic human rights, the right to live, the right to a safe livelihood, the right to housing, the right to family. And people are always, or my students are often say they had never thought about the Paris Agreement in these contexts. And I think this is really, if we want to make more progress with respect to climate change, we need to talk more about why we actually

care about it. It's not because we care about polar bears, even some of us might. That it is because climate change, if it's continuous unchecked or very little checked, is continuing to violate the human rights of the vast majority of the population for the profit of very few already wealthy people. So you talk a lot about the effects of us living in a post-colonial world, if I can say that. So why has that had such a deep impact seen through this lens? Because obviously it's had all sorts of other impact. Every time we do a study with my team, and with my team, we study the effects of climate change on extreme weather. But we also look at what else is happening, so apart from climate change and the weather.

So how vulnerable are people? Why are they vulnerable? And who is particularly vulnerable or who suffers most? And we always find that colonialism or post-colonialism is playing a massive role in that, be it either. If we choose an example like the floods in Pakistan that happened in 2022, that had huge impacts. And they were made more intense by climate change, so by the burning of fossil fuels. But also, people lost their lives and their villages because a lot of the water infrastructure in Pakistan was built as a prestige project for British engineers and never actually intended to,

serve the people who are using this infrastructure. Or in other ways, we now see a lot of heavy flooding events. So we had examples in Nepal, but also in the Philippines, where the flooding then lent a lot of landslides, and the landslides were primarily caused by deforestation, deforestation for mining materials that are used not in the region, but in the global north. And so these structures that were during the colonial times, we still have very much in our economic system, and they make people still much more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, even though, of course, they still don't benefit. It's not people in the Philippines or Nepal who get the profits. Sticking with that, like these days more and more commentate, especially in the current

political climate, are talking about the widening gap between the rich and the poor. So in the book, you have a chapter titled Poverty, the Root of the Crisis. So let's investigate that, you know. How are poorer communities being affected so deeply by climate change? So climate change manifests primarily through the changing intensities of extreme weather events. And usually the poorer you are, the fewer options you have for making a living. so your livelihood options are limited and in a lot of parts of the worlds

they are for poor people very much limited to agriculture which of course is extremely dependent on the weather but even if it's not agriculture or construction working or other professions that are very much dependent on the weather and therefore just frankly people are very much exposed to the impact of climate change which is if you have more affluent populations, usually have higher education, people have different ways of earning a living. So even if they

used to work in agriculture, there would be alternative options. And so it would not be stuck in this circle of ever increasing extreme events and therefore decreasing yields and higher costs to keep up the yields and therefore being overall poorer. And that's not just the case in the global south. That's also the case in poorer parts of rich countries. There's, for example, construction workers or other outdoor workers or people who are just, who can't afford in a heat wave to just stay home where it's cool, but who have to go to work, who have to work in buildings that are not well insulated and therefore are also extremely exposed to the impacts of climate change. So I was going to ask something else now, but you've just brought up another

question, which you talk about a bit, which is in about migratory workers. So as you say, a lot of these construction workers in different parts of the less wealthy countries, they're traveling around all over to carry out this work. So what impact is that having on their lives in the economy? If those who employ them don't have good worker safeguarding implemented, where, for example, you have during a heat wave, you have long breaks during the day and maybe have working hours shifted to the evenings or where there is additional water available or additional shade available, it means that what they can do in a day will decrease. And often in these countries, you have actually the pay dependent on what they have, not the hours they have worked, but what they have

actually completed. And so either they give their health and do that and then get their pay, or they safeguard their health, but then they won't be paid. And of course, the wages they get are anyway very, very low. And so they become even more dependent on these bad jobs that are difficult for them and for their families. Let's have a look at indigenous resources. Like you talk about deforestation in the Amazon. So obviously they've been doing that for a long time now, for timber, for castle grazing and things like that. But that's just making the problem worse. But you can't just say, well, because as you say, they're people that don't have very much money.

You can't say, well, can't do that then. No, of course, you can't say that to the workers. And that's why, sort of my premise is you cannot. And I brought the example also with mining at the beginning. You cannot just say, okay, we solve climate change now in a technical way. We just make everything electrified, and that's it. Because then we will still have the same people extremely exposed to people. poverty and to the impact. So either you have poor people doing the mining and therefore are then

very much exposed to the impact of climate change. And it's also extremely destructive for the ecosystems because, I mean, biodiversity is also not just nice to have. It's also really, really important for us. And you can't say, oh, you can't say to the workers stop deforestation. That has to be, of course, through legislation. And that's why I said we need to fight inequality, because that is only possible if you have alternative options to get an income. And that is only possible if you have education and if you have social security systems. And I think that's one thing that is also one reason why I wrote this book. I mean, especially at the moment, it is always portrayed as if the quality of life

that has increased in the West during the 20th century has increased. increased because of the burning of fossil fuels. But of course, having access to cheap energy was important, but the quality of life has only increased when education was made available for everyone, when social security systems and access to healthcare was available also for the people working in the industrialized community. because when we started burning fossil fuels, actually life expectancy of most people went down

because of just how bad the jobs are for you. And I think that this false causality that the fossilness of the fuels itself is what brings your standard of living at is something we really need to counter much more because it's not that. It is social security, healthcare, education. and the American dream is not burn or dig baby dig.

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And one of which is Madagascar, which is at threat from all of these issues as well, but also a quite largely based tourist economy and export economy with vanilla and things. And the COVID pandemic just shut this down. And there was no sort of safeguards in place to protect against that. So what's the situation there? So in Madagascar, in my book, I particularly look at a drought that led to quite severe famine. And there was actually a drought where climate change didn't play a big role. But as you said, all the other things we have talked about because it was that the people who were dependent on

agriculture and the yields were just because of the drought were just not producing enough. So people couldn't sell anything locally because also because it was actually that the prices that no one locally had anything to sell in terms of food, but especially also no one could buy anything, because it would have been quite expensive. And there would have been, of course, an option for people maybe to sell them at markets a bit further away. That would then have some people who still have produced something,

would have then have some money and could have bought something from local farmers. But because there's a single, basically to southern Madagascar there, a single road that was washed down in a rainfall event and not repaired. And then in addition to that, there were also just travel restrictions, very strict travel restrictions because of the pandemic. So people were stuck. People couldn't go to markets further away. And so people had basically nothing to sell, even those who might have something couldn't sell it locally, but also couldn't sell it anywhere else. And that meant that then also, because there was just not enough available to keep something for next year to plan, it meant that even though when the drought was over, people

just didn't have enough seeds to plan for the next season and were completely stuck in this cycle of extreme poverty and then dependent on international aid. So I was going to ask about that. So obviously this is a global problem, which requires global solutions. So what can we be doing? So like, because we're all told now here in the UK, buy local, don't buy things with air miles, don't buy products from other countries. It's such a complicated issue. Is there anything we can say about that?

I think it's a good thing to say don't buy anything that necessarily that needs to fly a long way because it would be much more useful if we would. constructs our markets so that products only go shorter ways if possible, or of course, if it's products that are not that easily spoiled, then of course they can be transported by ship. So definitely buy vanilla from Madagascar or ground nuts, because they can often be produced much, much more energy efficient in the countries where they're naturally grow, because they don't need to have, I mean, if you buy stuff that's grown in the UK, often it can only be grown in greenhouses, which require huge amounts of energy and that's definitely not the

most energy efficient or energy-friendly one. So, I mean, this whole thing fight inequality is not an easy task. And it's not something that we can solve just as consumers. But I think as consumers, we are not just consumers. We are also people who have voices elsewhere and who can make decisions, who can vote, who can argue for changes here, but also, of course, just lay bare who is exploited, where and why. And it is hard work, but each one of us has a lot of agency to start that work. So how do we go about doing that then? It's a bit of a cliche, but people say vote with your wallet,

choose your political parties based on certain ethical principles. But what can we do? Do you have any ideas? So I think one of the most important things that we are lacking at the moment and that we can all really do a lot to change is that we don't really have a good story, a good narrative, how a fairer world would look like or a world with much less inequality. because, I mean, there's maybe the odd book or so that is not mainstream. All our mainstream movies or mainstream books, they all are, I mean, if they are not set

in medieval fantasy world, if they are set in sort of the real world, they are set in the status quo. So even if it's absolutely not the topic of the story, the heroes will drive cars. They will go into the sunset on Route 66 and they're convertible if it's a happy ending. And we don't have any alternatives. We don't have any kind of cool, interesting movie figures or people in books and narratives that live in a different world, in a fairer world, maybe in a world that has much fairer global economy or in a world where you can actually walk across the road without hearing for your life.

And I think that's something where we all can, I mean, we can either write those stories, but of course we can demand that they exist, we can look for them. And we can also just talk every time we talk to someone about isn't everything terrible. You can also talk about, well, what would the world look like that we would want to live in? And I think if we change that, that would be a really big step forward. I think that's really interesting, that point of narratives and the point of art to transform people's opinions about what largely people would say are scientific or political issues. But what other ways can we sort of raise awareness of these problems? I think other ways are just talk about the evidence and the facts, much more in conversations where you think.

oh, this has nothing to do with signs and just talk about, well, actually it does have something to do with signs because I think one thing at the moment, especially, that is also a big problem is that science has got this weirdly bad reputation and it's just as if science is just something,

a luxury thing that wealthy people might want to do, but that is not serving people and I think we just have to counter that narrative. Because without science, so many more people would die. And I mean, we see what happens now when people start dying from measles again, where we have a really effective and well-working vaccination.

But also, people then say they don't believe in science and then step into their car. There would not be a car without science. You wouldn't know how to turn a bit of oil into kinetic energy without science. And I think that is everywhere, and that's also something that's actually really easy to point out. And so because I think one of the most problematic things we have at the moment is because of all the lies and all the misinformation flying around, even for well-meaning people, there is just a lot of cynicism that it feels like nothing I say matters, nothing matters, because you can just say everything and it doesn't matter. And I think it does matter. It does matter a huge amount what you say, and especially what we say in sort of everyday life to just in just normal conversations.

And I think that's something where we do have a lot of agency to just counter lies and misinformation. And we just need to keep doing that and do that much more. So you spoke earlier about education, which is obviously vital. But I think there's sort of two interesting points to this. One is formal education in schools, and the other is sort of self-education. You know, people do it themselves. So how do we see through all of this misinformation? How do we figure out what is trustworthy and what isn't?

Usually you actually can quite easily when you go to where does this information come from, what's the source. You can find out quite easily if you want to where it comes from. if it is, say, a think tank that is paid for by the oil industry, or if it's a public university, or if it is it the BBC, or is it some media group that has dubious funding, or that is not hard to find out. And it really is worth doing. I think it's harder to do that on social media often,

because you just, when you look at Instagram, you just get these little snippets. And I mean, I think probably the boring answer, at least it might sound boring, is on the one hand, encourage people who create good, well-resourced content also to use Instagram and not just write books. But I think also in the same way that we lack, I think, narratives with about what the world would look like that we would want to live in. I think we also don't have that much representation or narratives anymore where people, where it's cool to be an intellectual, where it's cool to be well read, where it's cool to have asked all the questions. And I think that's also something that we can change.

So sort of by way of closing that, we've cut an awful lot there. Are you optimistic we can change this? Yes, yes, we can absolutely change this. because, I mean, we have seen a huge backlash in the last few years. And I think if we had this conversation only a couple of years ago, maybe both of us would have felt that we have actually covered a lot of ground and we are on a slightly more positive trajectory towards combating climate change, for example.

And I think we see now the very strong fighting back from those who profit from the status quo. And that has changed very quickly, but that also means it can change in the other way again quickly. Public opinion can be changed quite quickly and not just with lies, but also with actually meaningful evidence. And so I think if we, who won't not realize that on a larger scale, things can quite quickly change. And also, I mean, we do see that people die from measles now, which they do. didn't used to because they were all vaccinated. And we do see the very strong impacts on climate change and how they hit also, yeah, not just people in the global south, but everywhere.

And that where there are early warning system, where there is good weather forecast, the death toll is much lower than in regions were not. So I think it is so obvious that this anti-science is really not serving people. People, will also realize that. I'm quite optimistic about that. And what is really important is that we keep the institutions that we have alive and strengthen them so that when we realize we have to go back to the rule of law, we have to go back to better education. The structures are there and we have to make them stronger. I think that's the hardest task for us now is to strengthen and the institutions, even if others try to dismantle them.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought you from the team behind BBC Science FACUS. That was Dr Federico. To discover more about the topics we've just discussed, check out her latest book, Climate Injustice, Why We Need to Fight Global Inequality to Combat Climate Change. If you liked what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius

on your preferred podcast platform. If you'd like to see our guests and hosts in person, then please do consider checking out our YouTube channel at ScienceFocus. The current issue of BBC ScienceFocus magazine is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download us on your preferred app store. You can also find us on Apple News or online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio,

and focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analogue warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist vocal, Name creates high-end audio systems combining innovation with craftsmanship so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended. Discover more at nameaudio.com.