Global warming will not only devastate agriculture in developing countries, it will undermine economic and political stability to a far greater extent than previously imagined, according to new study.
The link between “high temperatures and poor growth is much stronger than we’d realised”, says , an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Crucially, says Olken, his team’s study is the first to link climate change with economic growth – as opposed to output – which will have a bigger long-term effect on a country’s fortunes.
High temperatures could even undermine scientific productivity, say Olken’s team. If they are correct, the economic gulf between rich and poor nations will widen dramatically this century.
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The team looked at how temperatures affected economic growth in the past 50 years. While rich economies seemed resilient to temperature rises, the GDP of poor countries dropped by 1 per cent in years when those temperatures rose 1 °C or more above the regional average.
The number of scientific papers – a measure of innovation – also fell in poor countries in hot years, as did economic investment in the region. Breakdown in government was more likely, as were political coups.
Olken says his results fit with other studies showing that high temperatures increase civil unrest, and that drought can lead to political instability. at a meeting of the , in San Francisco.
Slowing growth rates would have cumulative effects that studies might miss if they were only focusing on specific issues such as the impact of drought on food supply, he says. If global temperatures rise as predicted, the economic gap between rich and poor nations will have doubled a decade from now. In 50 years’ time the gap will have widened 12-fold.
The study’s breadth and emphasis on growth is welcome but the results need to be treated with caution, economist of the École Polytechnique in Paris, France, told New Scientist. He points out that Olken failed to find a link between rainfall and economic growth that previous work on agriculture suggests should exist.
of the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, adds that poor nations often suffer from corruption, a factor that Olken’s analysis did not explicitly control for.
