Finance & economics | Development v climate

The choice between a poorer today and a hotter tomorrow

Without trillions of extra dollars, policymakers face a terrible decision

Burning sand in an hourglass
Image: Pablo Delcan
|Accra and Paris

Suppose, for a minute, that you are a finance minister in the developing world. At the end of a year in which your tax take has disappointed, you are just about out of money. You could plough what little remains into your health-care system: dollars spent by clinics help control infectious diseases, and there is not much that development experts believe to be a better use of cash. But you could also spend the money constructing an electrical grid that is able to handle a switch to clean energy. In the long run this will mean less pollution, more productive farmland and fewer floods. Which is a wiser use of the marginal dollar: alleviating acute poverty straight away or doing your country’s bit to stop baking the planet?

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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Development v climate”

From the July 1st 2023 edition

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