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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

The UN-IPCC addressed the social impact for the first time in 2014 with
a chapter on “Livelihoods and Poverty” (UN-IPCC, 2014a: ch. 13). The major
conclusions of this chapter were that “socially and economically disadvantaged

and marginalized people are disproportionally affected by climate change”
(UN-IPCC, 2014a: 796), but that the subject had thitherto been neglected: “Poverty
dynamics are not sufficiently accounted for in current climate change research….
Few studies examine how structural inequalities, power imbalances, and
intersecting axes of privilege and marginalization shape differential vulnerabilities
to climate change.” (UN-IPCC, 2014a: 818-9)

In 2017, a UN working paper addressed the issue of climate change
and inequality, summarizing the interaction as follows:
Available evidence indicates that this relationship is characterized by

a vicious cycle, whereby initial inequality causes the disadvantaged
groups to suffer disproportionately from the adverse effects of climate
change, resulting in greater subsequent inequality. The paper identifies
three main channels through which the inequality-aggravating effect of
climate change materializes, namely (a) increase in the exposure of the
disadvantaged groups to the adverse effects of climate change; (b) increase
in their susceptibility to damage caused by climate change; and (c) decrease
in their ability to cope and recover from the damage suffered. (Islam and
Winkel, 2017: 1)

This analysis recognized that the mechanisms that resulted in climate
change weighing more heavily on the poor were both economic and political.
On the latter, it proposed as follows:

In an unequal society, the advantaged groups (who own most of the
productive assets) usually “capture” or exert dominating influence on
the state and skew its policies in their favour. As a result, they can deploy
more of the public (state) resources for their protection against climate
hazard, leaving the disadvantaged groups less. (Islam and Winkel,
2017: 11)

The UNDP developed the same idea in its 2019 Human Development
Report on inequality: “Environmental inequalities are largely a choice, made by
those with the power to choose” (UNDP, 2019: 192). However, the UN’s treatment
of the political aspect necessarily remains rather formal, and does not engage

144 Climate Change and Inequality in Southeast Asia:
Review, Prospects, Priorities

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