Global South must be saved from fossil fuels and other climate-harming practices

Climate change is bringing hunger, poverty, terror and grief to millions of people. This is now a waking nightmare, especially for those in the Global South. Intolerable heatwaves, scorching droughts, devastating cyclones and calamitous flooding events are escalating across the planet.
In my country Ethiopia, the World Bank says mean temperatures are expected to rise to 1.8 degrees by 2050, and by 3.7 degrees by end of the century, due to current high emissions. This will be catastrophic.
Ethiopia is among countries most vulnerable to climate change. The impact of the current Horn of Africa drought alone on Ethiopia has been disastrous, with more than 10 million pastoralists and agro-pastoralist communities losing their livelihood assets, and being forced to leave their localities. It is estimated that climate change impacts, especially drought, will reduce the gross domestic product of the country by up to 10 per cent by 2045.
This is a crisis not of our making. Responsibility lies mainly in the industrialised Global North, and corporations that continue to play a disproportionate role in fossil fuel use, exploitation and expansion.
Fossil fuels are by far the largest contributor to climate change, accounting for more than 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The potential emissions from the coal, oil and gasfields already in production would push emissions way above 1.5 degrees. Developing any new fossil fuel extraction projects or infrastructure is incompatible with the Paris Agreement and the 1.5-degree climate goal.
Industrial agriculture, and the unsustainable food system that it supplies, is also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports agriculture, forestry and other land use accounts for 13-21 per cent of emissions globally. The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that deforestation alone is responsible for 11 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, with much of this occurring in tropical regions of the Global South.
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In June 2024, scientists reported that the average global temperature had been 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels for a full year. The year 2023 was the hottest since records began, with unprecedented human-induced climate change further exacerbated by the El Niño effect.
With each month in the first half of 2024 surpassing previous temperature records, it is “increasingly likely” that this year will surpass 2023 and become the warmest year on record. These rising global temperatures are directly contributing to devastating humanitarian emergencies. In 2023, extreme weather events driven by climate change displaced in excess of 20 million people globally, with 80 per cent of displacements occurring in the Global South.
The IPCC has warned that if global temperatures rise by 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the number of people facing extreme heatwaves could increase by 37 per cent, putting millions more lives at risk. The World Food Programme estimates that, by 2050, climate change could push an additional 122 million people into extreme poverty, predominantly in Africa and South Asia.
The climate crisis is deeply gendered. According to UN Women, women are 14 times more likely to die from climate disasters than men. Some 80 per cent of people displaced by climate disasters are women. When water sources dry up, girls and women walk further to fetch water. When crops fail, women are more likely to skip meals. More girls drop out of school, child marriage increases and gender-based violence rises.
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As an African woman, a mother and a leader, I witness first hand the devastation man-made climate change is imposing on communities in the Global South. In Borana, one of Ethiopia’s most affected regions in the southeast, women have to walk 18km to fetch water, even when pregnant.
At the heart of this climate crisis is money. Too much money is fuelling climate change, too little money is going to climate solutions, and extractive money flows are locking economies deeper into climate-destructive spirals that increase inequality.
Many of the world’s most powerful private banks are pumping billions into fossil fuel expansion, knowing full well that their decisions directly lead to climate chaos and devastating local pollution, particularly for communities in Africa.
ActionAid research in 2023 showed that bank financing for the fossil fuel industry in the 134 countries of the Global South reached an estimated $3.2 trillion (€2.9 trillion) since 2016, when the Paris Agreement on Climate Change was adopted. Bank financing to the largest industrial agriculture companies operating in the Global South amounted to $370 billion over the same period.
HSBC is the largest European financer of fossil fuels and agribusiness in the Global South. Barclays is the largest European bank financier to fossil fuels around the world. And Citibank is the largest US financier of fossil fuels in the Global South.
This astonishing amount of fossil-fuel and industrial agriculture financing in the Global South is causing land grabs, deforestation, water and soil pollution, and loss of livelihoods – all compounding the injustice to communities already impacted by droughts, floods and cyclones, thanks to climate change.
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Ireland too plays a unique role. ActionAid Ireland research revealed €5.7 billion in harmful fossil fuels and agribusiness is funnelled through Ireland to the Global South via foreign direct investment with some of the world’s largest investment companies on behalf of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.
While banks and investors could turn off the taps, it’s clear they won’t. To avert catastrophic climate change, governments and entities such as the European Union must drive a transition from corporations destroying the planet. We need to end the finance flows that are fuelling the climate crisis and wrecking the planet. At the moment, the global financial system is better designed to escalate – rather than address – climate change, vulnerability, and inequality.
Countries like mine need to see much greater political, financial and legislative weight behind a transition away from climate-harming activities. Governments are using far more of their public funds to provide subsidies or tax breaks for fossil fuels and industrial agriculture corporations than they are for climate action. This is hurting the planet and hurting people. Public funds instead need to be redirected toward just transitions that address climate change and inequality.
Wealthy countries of the Global North have been industrialising and polluting for more than a century. They are historically responsible for the emissions that continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, and which continue to heat the planet today.
It is therefore right and fair that wealthy polluting countries of the Global North take the most urgent climate action to cut emissions by moving away from fossil fuels and industrial agriculture, and to provide their fair share of climate finance to the Global South. At the same time, it is also in the interests of the Global South to “leapfrog” over these dead-end, climate-destructive industries, and to transition to low-emission development pathways as soon as possible.
The injustice is clear given Africa’s contribution to global carbon emissions. The continent has 17 per cent of the world’s population, yet it emits less than 4 per cent of global carbon emissions – the smallest share of all world regions. Sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa, has contributed only 0.6 per cent to global CO2 emissions over the past two centuries. Within this, Ethiopia has contributed 0.2 per cent, in contrast with Ireland’s contribution of 0.13 per cent of global emissions.
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This year’s Cop29 climate talks will be a critical test of rich countries’ commitment to securing a liveable planet. Despite the fact that the world’s poorest countries are already bearing the spiralling costs of a warming planet, so far they have only received begrudging, tokenistic pennies from the rich polluting countries in Loss and Damage.
The question is, will this be the year that the Global North significantly steps up its climate ambitions and takes responsibility for its historical actions?
The time for action is long overdue. Women in Africa and around the world cannot continue to bear the brunt of a crisis they did not create. The call for climate justice is not just urgent; it is a matter of survival.
Tinebeb Berhane is country director for ActionAid Ethiopia. ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries, striving for a just, fair and sustainable world