Climate crisis

In Asia, the primary impact of climate change is on the monsoon cycle. Essentially, areas that traditionally get a lot of rain will get even more while dry regions will become even drier.

Just this month, record rainfall in central China produced flooding and mudslides that killed more than 300 people.

Korea has experienced the same catastrophes. Last summer, heavy rainfall swept through the middle of South Korea, flooding the city of Daejeon and even overflowing the banks of the Han in Seoul. It was the longest monsoon in seven years: 42 straight days of rain.

North Korea, too, went through heavy rains last summer. And now it is facing flooding once again. In the country’s northeast, heavy rains have destroyed houses and farmland. At least 5,000 people have been evacuated from the flood zones.

For South Korea, climate change will largely be felt through extreme weather events, primarily flooding in certain areas and droughts in others. Tidal flats will disappear. Agriculture will be affected by rising temperatures and the influx of new insects. But with less than 5 percent of the population working in the agricultural sector and the country importing a lot of its food, the consequences will not be acute. South Korean agriculture can adapt.

In North Korea, however, climate change will have a devastating effect on the population’s food security. The government has admitted that the country is now facing its “worst-ever” situation, which has been compounded by COVID-19 and the dramatic reduction of trade coming from neighboring China.

According to a recent report on security and climate risk in North Korea, “Climate projections indicate that areas of the South Hamgyong and North Pyongan provinces, which cultivate a combined 38% of the country’s rice and 30% of its soybeans, will experience up to an additional 3 months of severe drought each year by 2035.” In other areas, severe flooding will disrupt food production.

If this sounds familiar, it’s exactly the same combination of drought and flooding that triggered North Korea’s food crisis in the early 1990s, which led to the country’s ‘Arduous March’ of famine and institutional breakdown. The North Korean political and economic system is no better prepared today to deal with these systemic stresses than it was in the 1990s.

The two Koreas cannot by themselves stop the climate crisis. Right now, because of its rather low industrial and agricultural production, North Korea has a very small carbon footprint, comparable to that of Trinidad and Tobago. Since 1990, it has actually cut its carbon emissions by over 70 percent, though again this has not been a conscious choice but rather the byproduct of a steep economic decline.

South Korea, by contrast, is one of the top ten emitters of carbon in the world. It has taken steps to reduce its own emissions, promising to be carbon neutral by 2050. But even if Seoul abides by that pledge, it won’t by itself arrest climate change.

But here’s what the two Koreas can do. They can unite in the fight against global warming. They can compose a peninsular plan to transition together to a clean energy future. The two Koreas can put aside all the differences that divide them – the military confrontation, the vast economic gap, the enormous divergence in political systems – and focus instead on the common threat of climate change.

In this one category, North Korea actually has a certain advantage in that its carbon output right now is relatively low. Given a relatively modest amount of capital, North Korea can leapfrog more easily to a carbon-neutral economy.

South Korea is the one that needs to catch up by drastically reducing its carbon emissions. And it will cost a great deal more for its advanced economy to pivot. But South Korea also has the capital to help both halves of the peninsula make this transition.

In this way, the two Koreas won’t by themselves transform the global economy. But by setting aside their myriad differences, North and South Korea can show the rest of the world that addressing the climate emergency must take precedence over all other disagreements.

Excerpted: ‘Korea and the Climate Crisis’

Counterpunch.org