Recent research on global environmental justice has revealed the shocking fact that pollution from one country has become deadly for the populations of other countries. The study found that air pollution originating in the United States causes approximately 12,000 deaths in India and 38,000 in China each year. Similarly, emissions from the 27 countries of the European Union have nearly doubled the risk of extreme weather events in the Amazon rainforest and Southeast Africa. Scientists believe this transnational impact is driven by atmospheric chemistry, global air currents, and the physical processes of climate warming.

Winds know no borders, so pollution has become a global crisis, not just a national one. Professor Daniel Jacob, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explains that pollution particles originating in North America travel to Asia via the jet stream, while pollutants originating in Europe reach the Amazon Basin and tropical regions of Africa. The Harvard T.H. Researchers at the Chan School of Public Health found that fine particles from industrialized countries collide with the Asian monsoon and accumulate in densely populated areas of India and China.

Countries that pollute the least suffer the most
The study also highlights that poor and developing countries, which contribute the least to global emissions, are bearing the greatest burden of pollution-related disasters. On the other hand, the emissions-driven lifestyles of wealthy and industrialized nations maintain unequal control over the Earth's ecosystem. Professor Sibusiso Mapolela, a climate justice expert at the University of Cape Town, says that climate change is not a meteorological crisis, but a structural model of power, consumption, and injustice.

The crisis is shared, but responsibility is not shared
The research concludes that the environmental crisis is shared, but responsibility is not equal. The disaster caused by emissions from wealthy nations is bearing the heaviest impacts on countries with virtually no role in it.