Climate Change, Poverty and Globalization (English)

This week, I have been in a country side of Nicaragua, interviewing mainly farmers in the area.

Through various interviews, I realized the negative effect of climate change keenly.

Surely, I have studied and read about climate change but never thought and felt about the serious consequence of it in real. Warmer whether has just been a bit of annoying phenomenon for me.

The main purpose of the interviews was to find out the root cause of default of clients of a micro-finance institute.

And one of the main reasons of their default was the lack of rainfall.

Now, it is winter in Nicaragua and it is supposed to be raining but has not been raining for a long time.

All of the interviewees told me that the amount of rainfall has been drastically dropping down in recent years. It goes without saying that this is critical for their products such as maize, sesame and wheat.

Also, the decline of productivity of these crops affects their livestock (Chicken, Pig and Cow) production because these crops are the feeds of their livestock. Normally, they are running both agriculture and livestock business at the same time.

Their main purpose of borrowing money from micro finance institution is to rent small land to produce crops or to buy small pigs or cows to nurture and sell.

Therefore, the decline of rainfall makes it impossible for them to repay their loan.

The thing is that they are not responsible for the decline of rainfall, obviously.

They are one of those who have most eco-friendly lifestyle in this planet.

Those who are responsible for climate change are maybe huge companies that are emitting huge amount of CO2 and also WE, habitants in industrialized countries who's per capita energy consumption is much higher than these farmers.

As described in this book, climate change is affecting the most vulnerable people in the planet.

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

Climate change is not just a problem of the raise of sea level.

It is also related to the problem of poverty.

Here, we tend to jump to the conclusion that says, "International farms are enlarging the difference between the poor and the rich."

But the problem is not that simple, as one of the interviewees told me as following;

"I hope that Japanese companies come to Nicaragua and build factories to create stable job, which is not affected by climate."

This statement was really interesting because the typical image of international companies is maybe "exploiting" poor people hiring them with low salary.

But actually, they could be their hope.

Here, in this article, I do not have any intention to criticize or evaluate the situation. To understand the situation in detail, I need to study international-economics, development studies, climate change, agriculture...etc etc and philosophy. I do not want to jump to a simple conclusion.

But at least, as we can observe in this case, now the world is more and more connected with each other.

Our daily lifestyle may be related to the people who are living in the other side of the world.

We need to have a global and inter-disciplinary view to understand the world, and it's just interesting.