A study that estimated the social impact of climate policy in 88 countries has found that the biggest differences are not between the rich and poor, but within same income groups – key factors include car ownership, place of residence and energy use.
The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, provides guidance on how to socially balance the fight against global heating, researchers said.
“Uncertainty around the social impacts of climate policy is a problem for many governments worldwide,” lead author Leonard Missbach, researcher at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said.
“They don’t know how the costs of the measures will be distributed across their populations, nor how they can compensate for these burdens in a way that ensures political acceptance.
That’s why we took a closer look at this using a novel, large-scale dataset and applying machine learning,” Missbach said. The dataset is based on national surveys in which a total of 1.7 million representatively-selected private households anonymously list their expenditure, “mirroring the reality of life in 88 countries with a total of 5 billion people,” the researchers said.
It also contained information on the amount of carbon dioxide that can be attributed to individual expenditure items- both directly, such as for petrol and heating oil, and indirectly for all other expenditure, they said.
Using the “unprecedented collection of individual ‘carbon footprints’”, the team then analysed who exactly is affected by climate policy measures, also looking at differences in the additional burden imposed by climate policy relative to income.
The greater the differences between households within a country, the more cases of hardship will result from the policy, and the more difficult it becomes to provide compensation, the analysis revealed.
The researchers said a key finding is that for the 88 countries in the study, the impact gap between rich and poor- the traditional focus of social balancing efforts- is significantly smaller than the disparities within an income group.
Compensation measures targeting the traditional gap, such as graduated transfers or tax rebates, therefore help many vulnerable households less than expected, and may even exacerbate the inequality of impacts, they said.
The study disentangled the drivers of heterogeneity, or differences, with key factors including ownership of cars and motorbikes, geographical aspects such as urban versus rural areas, and energy use, such as energy sources used for cooking, lighting and heating, and the use of larger household appliances.
Ownership of motorbikes was found to be an important household characteristic in countries such as Niger, Burkina Faso and Togo that helps explain the relatively greater burden imposed by climate policy.
However, differences between households in Latvia, Sweden and the Czech Republic were particularly well explained by the urban-rural divide.
The question of energy sources for cooking is particularly relevant in Nicaragua and India, while the use of household appliances is key in Switzerland and the Philippines, the researchers said.
There are also many countries where differences in the burden cannot be explained by common characteristics, and further research is needed to identify options for targeted compensation, they added.
The findings highlight opportunities for cross-national policy conversations, the team said. (PTI)
