New Delhi, May 7 Ten per cent of the world's richest individuals have a higher carbon footprint than the poorest 50 per cent, leading to climate extremes such as heat waves and droughts, according to a study on Wednesday.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, that the world's wealthiest 10 per cent are responsible for two-thirds of observed global warming since 1990.
"Our study shows that extreme climate impacts are not just the result of abstract global emissions, instead we can directly link them to our lifestyle and investment choices, which in turn are linked to wealth," explains lead author Sarah Schongart, from the ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
"We found that wealthy emitters play a major role in driving climate extremes, which provides strong support for climate policies that target the reduction of their emissions," she added.
An international team of researchers from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Australia assessed the contribution of the highest emitting groups within societies.
The findings showed that the top 1 per cent of the wealthiest individuals globally contributed 26 times the global average to increases in monthly 1-in-100-year heat extremes globally and 17 times more to Amazon droughts.
The research sheds new light on the links between income-based emissions inequality and climate injustice, illustrating how the consumption and investments of wealthy individuals have had disproportionate impacts on extreme weather events.
"If everyone had emitted like the bottom 50 per cent of the global population, the world would have seen minimal additional warming since 1990," says co-author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, who leads the Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.
The impacts are especially severe in vulnerable tropical regions like the Amazon, Southeast Asia, and southern Africa -- areas historically known to have contributed the least to global emissions.
The study also emphasises the importance of emissions embedded in financial investments, rather than just personal consumption.
The researchers argued that targeting the financial flows and portfolios of high-income individuals could yield substantial climate benefits.
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