Box 1.1 Least Developed Countries: mitigation challenges and opportunities:
The Least Developed Countries (LDCs) consist of 49 countries and over 850 million people, located primarily in Africa and Asia—with 34 LDCs in Africa alone (UNFPA, 2011). These countries are characterised by low income (three-year average gross national income per capita of less than USD 992), weak human assets index (nutrition, health, school enrolment, and literacy), and high economic vulnerability criterion (UNCTAD, 2012a). Despite their continued marginalization in the global economy, these countries’ economies grew at about 6% per year from 2000 to 2008, largely stimulated by the strong pull-effect of the Asian emerging economies (Cornia, 2011). However, the global economic downturn and the worsening Eurozone crisis have had an effect on most LDC economies. In 2011, LDCs grew by 4.2%, 1.4 percentage lower than the preceding year, hence mirroring the slowdown of growth worldwide (UNCTAD, 2012a). Many of the traditional domestic handicaps remain as LDC economies continue to be locked into highly volatile external transactions of commodities and low-productivity informal activities, having neither the reserves nor the resources needed to cushion their economies and adjust easily to negative shocks.
Regarding the social trends, LDCs as a group have registered encouraging progress towards achieving some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially in primary school enrolment, gender parity in primary school enrolment, HIV/AIDS prevalence rates and the share of women in non-agricultural wage employment (Sachs, 2012). However, poverty reduction has been less successful; only four (of 33) LDCs are on track to cut the incidence of extreme poverty to half 1990 levels by 2015 (UNCTAD, 2011). In line with this, the Istanbul Programme of Action, adopted at the 4th UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) highlighted the importance of building the productive base of LDCs’ economies and promoting the process of structural transformation involving an increase in the share of high productivity manufacturing and an increase in agricultural productivity (UNCTAD, 2012b).
The LDCs’ continued reliance on climate-sensitive activities such as agriculture means that adapting to climate change remains a central focus of economic development. If climate changes become acute the additional burden of adaptation could draw resources away from other activities, such as mitigation. Alternatively, more acute attention to adaptation could help mobilize additional efforts for mitigation within these countries and other countries that are the world’s largest emitters. The scientific literature has not been able to determine exactly when and how adaptation and mitigation are complementary or competing activities in LDCs; what is clear, however, is that meeting the climate and development challenge entails integrating mitigation and adaptation actions in the context of sustainable development (Ayers and Huq, 2009; Martens et al., 2009; Moomaw and Papa, 2012). In LDCs, like all other countries, investment in new infrastructures offers the opportunity to avoid future GHG emissions and lower mitigation costs (Bowen and Fankhauser, 2011). Other emissions avoidance options are also available for LDCs in areas of innovative urban development, improvements in material productivity (Dittrich et al., 2012) and the application of enhanced land use efficiency through intensified agricultural practices and sustainable livestock management (Burney et al., 2010). There could be significant additional costs associated with the expansion of infrastructure in LDCs aimed at decoupling GHG emissions and development. Paying these costs in countries with extremely scarce resources could be a challenge (Krausmann et al., 2009). Moreover, the additional costs could deter private investors in low carbon interventions, leaving the public sector with additional burdens, at least in the short-term (UN DESA, 2009; Collier and Venables, 2012). For most LDC governments, creating the conditions for accelerated economic growth and broad-based improvements in human well-being will remain the main driver of national development policies and could lead to the perception—if not the reality—that development and mitigation are conflicting goals.
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