Climate Change Mitigation Strategies: Impacts and Obstacles in Low- and Middle- Income Countries

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Published as part of the Earth4All project, the authors of this paper discuss the possible adverse effects of well-meaning climate mitigation strategies and consider how these adverse effects can themselves be mitigated. They assess the distributional effects of mitigation strategies on various social groups in different geographies for different generations to cover the socio-spatial-temporal dynamics of the consequences. For instance, solar panels, motors for wind turbines, or batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles are crucial in the fight against climate change and their demand is increasing rapidly in advanced economies. But many of these technologies require critical minerals concentrated in low- and middle-income nations, and the way they are extracted can have adverse outcomes, irreversibly damaging the environment and displacing indigenous communities. The authors argue that these negative outcomes are not inevitable; nor are they necessary “collateral damage” in otherwise positive shifts to green energy use. Avoiding these impacts requires changes in strategy not only for lower-income economies, but even more urgently in rich countries and at the global level.