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Paper short abstract:

Interests of vulnerable people are often marginalized in climate change assessment. The paper identifies how. It also explores two examples: debate on health impacts of climate change; and how far the latest IPCC Assessment Report considered specific types of persons with specific vulnerabilities.

Paper long abstract:

Interests of vulnerable low-income people are often marginalized in climate change assessments. Climate change research has been dominated by natural sciences and does not focus on human deaths or on particular vulnerable groups like small children. Some groups are excluded by insistence on a specific type of data or an established quantitative model. Deserving special mention are the downgrading of attention to: extreme weather events; hard-to-predict and low-probability(in any one year)-but-very-high-damage possible system-shifts; cross-sector effects, left out by research that separately estimates impacts within sectors to allow precise calculation. Priority is given to avoiding the 'risk' of not being confident in estimates, above the risk of major life-damage to weaker groups. Methods like aggregative monetized evaluations and discounting downgrade vulnerable groups and future generations. Last, 'conservatism' permeates each stage of estimation, not only those above. 'Conservative' here means low, often demonstrably too low, to reduce opposition from backers of fossil-fuelled economic growth. Two examples are explored in depth. Analysis of IPCC's latest Assessment Report shows that it neglects specific types of persons with specific risks, exposures and vulnerabilities. The implications of climate change for poor people remain obscured. Second, in the debate on impacts on human health from climate change arising from an affluent individual's consumption, the precautionary principle is applied to safeguard the interests of the already privileged, to avoid the 'risk' that emissions might be 'unnecessarily' reduced; risk of possible serious damage to the lives of vulnerable people is tolerated. The paper concludes with reflection on possible responses.