Center for Global Development: Rich Nations Policies on Climate Projects (Colonial and Hypocritical)

London-Sana

A study by the Center for International Development revealed that rich countries are adopting hypocritical colonial policies regarding climate projects, noting that they will lead to entrenching poverty and increasing carbon emissions.

"In the first two days of January, a British citizen was already responsible for more carbon dioxide emissions than a person from the Democratic Republic of the Congo could produce in an entire year," said the study conducted by the centre, which is a non-profit research institution based in London.

The study, which highlighted the huge disparity in energy consumption between rich and poor countries, found that every Briton produces 200 times more and every American produces 585 times the climate emissions of the average Congolese person.

The authors of the study said that by the end of this month the carbon emitted by a person living in Britain will exceed the annual emissions of citizens of 30 low and middle income countries.

"The center's work has been driven by the hypocritical climate policy of Western countries, including Britain and the United States, which have pledged to stop aid funding for fossil fuel-based projects in developing countries," said Ewan Ritchie, a policy analyst at the center.

"Our analysis shows that in just a few days the average person in Britain is producing more climate emissions than people in many low-income countries in an entire year and it would be a cruel paradox if countries that are least contributing to this problem do not have access to energy infrastructure," Ritchie added.

In turn, Vijaya Ramachandran, director of energy and development at the Breakthrough Institute in California, said that "a blanket ban on fossil fuel projects in poor countries is a colonial ban and will lead to the entrenchment of poverty and will not affect the reduction of carbon emissions in the world."

“It is very easy for rich countries to ban fossil fuel financing on poor countries while at the same time increasing their consumption of fossil fuels,” Ramachandran added, noting that this is hypocritical and devastating for poor countries because they need a wide range of energy to fuel development.

Many countries, including some developing countries and financial institutions, have signed a pledge to end public subsidies for international fossil fuel projects, but the countries themselves will be able to continue to develop fossil fuel use at home. The United States has at least 24 suspended fossil fuel projects representing more than 1.6 gigatonnes of potential greenhouse gas emissions as Britain licenses new oil and gas fields in the North Sea.