One Western life is worth 15 in the Third World, says UN report

Geoffrey Lean
Saturday 22 July 1995 23:02 BST
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LIVES in poor countries should be valued as worth 15 times less than those in the West, according to UN economists calculating the possible cost to the world of global warming.

Their calculations are in unpublished official documents, seen by the Independent on Sunday, which are expected to be endorsed by the world's governments this week. The documents are designed to guide policymakers in deciding how to respond to potentially disastrous climate change.

The calculations - which the documents admit are "controversial" and "reflect discrimination against the less well off" - are bound to create an international row just as evidence is mounting that global warming is taking hold. Reseach in both Britain and the United States shows that 1995 could be the hottest-ever year worldwide.

Experts say that the huge disparity between the value placed on life in rich and poor countries minimises assessments of the damage that will be done by global warming and so will give governments an excuse to avoid taking action to combat it.

Sir Crispin Tickell, the Prime Minister's chief advisor on the environment, describes the calculations as "ludicrous" and says they could discredit international attempts to evaluate the extent and consequences of the threatened climatic change. He has already written to protest to leaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), the official body set up by world governments to assess the dangers of global warming.

The documents have been prepared by economists in an IPPC working group and are expected to be approved by a plenary meeting of IPPC in Geneva on Tuesday.

They say that, by the best estimates, a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, in the atmosphere, could cause damage equivalent of only 1.5 to 2 per cent of the world economy. As some estimates suggest that the cost of cutting emissions of the gas would be greater, this may be taken as justification for inaction.

But these calculations are partly based on valuing lives in developing countries - where most of the deaths, mainly from strokes and heart attacks brought on by the extra heat, would occur - at pounds 62,500 each, compared to pounds 940,000 each in Europe and North America.

Lives in the former Soviet Union are valued at pounds 180,000 each, one fifth of the figure in the West.

Calculations which value all lives equally, and include other factors missing from the official assessment, produce estimates that global warming could cut the world's wealth by up to a quarter each year - which would call for dramatic preventative action.

Michael Grubb, head of the Energy And Environment Programme at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, who has made a special study of the costs of global warming, describes the 1.5 to 2 per cent figure as "ridiculously definite" and almost certainly a large underestimate.

He says that it is so far impossible to make an accurate assessment, but the cost could range from virtually nothing up to 25 per cent of world GDP.

Aubrey Meyer, director of the Global Commons Institute, which has produced similar figures, says : "The calculations the govenments are being asked to endorse are profoundly unreliable and could provide an excuse for them to do nothing. By placing such a low value on the lives of most of the world's people, they seem to endorse the economics of genocide."

So far this year worldwide temperatures have equalled those in the first part of 1990, the hottest year on record, suggesting that global warming is resuming after a brief lull.

The lull was caused by the huge volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in the summer of 1991, which flung 20 million tons of sulphur high into the atmosphere, filtering out sunlight. Until the eruption took place 1991 was set to be even hotter than 1990 after six record-breaking years in the 1980s.

The sulphur has now dropped out of the atmosphere and the hot years are returning. 1994 was the fourth warmest year ever and would have been the hottest if it had not been for an exceptionally cold January and February worldwide. Now 1995 is bidding for the record.

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