A new Oxfam analysis released on Tuesday revealed that the world’s richest 0.1 percent, comprising around 8 million people, produce more carbon pollution than the world’s poorest 3.5 billion people combined.
The report found that a person in the richest 0.1 percent contributed nearly 400 times more to today’s extreme heat waves than someone in the poorest 50 percent of the global population, while the richest 0.1 percent collectively produce more than three times as much carbon pollution as the entire population of sub-Saharan Africa.
The report also found that the world’s richest one percent have been responsible for 20 percent of global warming since 1990, with per capita emissions 100 times higher than those of the poorest half of humanity.
The study estimated that a single year of emissions from the richest one percent could cause 1.9 million excess heat-related deaths, with 78 percent of these deaths projected to occur in low- and lower-middle-income countries, which account for just eight percent of global emissions.
The report further projected that emissions from the richest one percent would cause nearly $53 trillion in economic damage by 2050.
The report also highlighted private aviation as a stark example of carbon inequality, finding that private jets collectively emit more carbon pollution in two seconds than a person in the poorest half of the global population produces in a year.
“While the super-rich are responsible for a disproportionate share of carbon pollution, it is ordinary people who bear the brunt of the resulting floods, fires and famine,” the report noted.
The report also warned that climate crisis could displace up to a billion people, around 10 percent of the global population, by 2050, with most expected to be in the Global South.
“The climate crisis is often described as a shared human challenge. It is not. Those who have done the least to cause it are losing their homes, their harvests and, increasingly, their lives. Meanwhile, the super-rich can buy their way out of danger,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
Behar noted that the super-rich also actively profit from the consequences of their pollution.
“This is not a tragedy of shared fate; it is a crime of extreme inequality,” Behar added.
The report also cautioned that climate disasters are increasingly being used to advance policies that deepen inequality, including privatisation, land grabs, deregulation and tax breaks for the super-rich.
“The ultra-rich are setting the planet on fire and then charging the rest of us for the extinguishers,” Behar said, adding: “They profit from the pollution. They profit from the disaster. And they profit again from the clean-up.”
Oxfam called on governments attending COP31 to make wealthy polluters pay through higher taxes, significantly increase public climate finance for the Global South and triple adaptation funding by 2035.
It also urged governments to reduce inequality through climate-resilient public infrastructure and services, and curb corporate profiteering from climate disasters.
