From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

5 THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM CLIMATE CHANGEcompensation for climate change damages under international environmentallaw. 218 Climate change could one day be treated as the equivalentof a gigantic industrial accident – an atmospheric Exxon Valdez.Butperhaps the closest parallel is with the tobacco industry,which has founditself forced to answer the question,‘Why did you continue trading andconcealing evidence, when you knew your activities would lead tomillions of deaths?’. Much the same could be asked of both companiesand governments that, despite the increasing strength of the evidence,fail to rein in carbon emissions. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni hasdescribed climate change as ‘an act of aggression by the rich against thepoor’. 219 Will the courts one day agree with him?In large part, the answer will depend upon the extent to which richcountries deliver on their commitments, and the principles underpinningthese, such as the ‘polluter pays’ principle, which establishes theduty of polluters – rather than victims – to pay for the costs of theirpollution. Since the worst impacts of climate change can be greatlyreduced through effective preventive steps – preparing for floods,anticipating dry spells and heat-waves, building infrastructureto withstand unprecedented frequency and scale of climate-relateddisasters – paying for adaptation rather than damages is a much moreefficient and humane approach for polluters to deliver on their obligations.Apart from helping to avoid a chaotic welter of litigation, itcan save lives and boost, rather than undermine, human development.How much will adaptation in developing countries cost? Whilecalculating such costs is a complicated and inexact science, setting aball-park figure is critical to provide guidelines for the internationalcommunity. Building on early World Bank estimates, but adding incommunity-level costs, Oxfam estimates the cost as a total of at least$50bn each year, and far more if greenhouse gas emissions are not cutrapidly. 220 The 2007 Human Development Report called for $86bnannually by 2015 in order to avoid ‘adaptation apartheid’ – a gulfbetween rich countries, where massive adaptation outlays are alreadyplanned, and poor countries, currently being left to (literally) sinkor swim.Studies are already under way to sharpen the economics of climateadaptation. While critical for better understanding how adaptationinvestments should be calculated and directed, it is already clear that409