MaximsNewsNetwork: 15 September 2009 – World Bank: A new World Bank report says a climate smart world is achievable for developing countries, but only with financial and technical support from the developed world.
A new World Bank report says a climate smart world is achievable for developing countries, but only with financial and technical support from the developed world. The World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change also says high income countries must lead global action on climate change by reducing their own heavy carbon footprints.
Developed countries can help to create a climate-smart world in two ways by cutting their own carbon emissions and by increasing funding for developing countries.
The report says its important for rich countries to take the lead, because they are responsible for about 50 percent of global emissions.
Yet it says developing countries will bear most of the cost of damage from climate change.
SOUNDBITE (English) Justin Lin, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, Development Economics:
Developing countries face 75 to 80 percent of the potential damage due to the global warming and they urgently need to prepare to face the challenges in rising sea levels, flood and drought. We need to help them improve their agricultural productivity to cope with the malnutrition problem and to build up weather resistance infrastructure.
Even a global two degrees Celsius warming could result in permanent reductions in annual per capita consumption of four to five percent for Africa and South Asia.
In East Asia and the Pacific, a large number of people live along the coast and on low-lying islands—over 130 million people in China, and more than half the entire population, in Vietnam, making them vulnerable to climate change.
Meanwhile, aging and inadequate infrastructure and housing in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are ill suited to withstand storms, heat waves, or floods.
Water is a major issue in the Middle East and North Africa, the worlds driest region.
Here, the amount of water available per head is likely to be halved by 2050 even in the absence of climate change.
And in Latin America and the Caribbean, critical ecosystems are under threat with disappearing glaciers and bleached coral reefs, and large-scale dieback of the Amazon rainforest could have severe effects on the worlds climate.
To reduce the risk of dramatic climate change in the future, the worlds energy system needs to be radically transformed.
SOUNDBITE (English) Rosina Bierbaum, World Development Report Co-Director and Dean of University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment: Fortunately, there are new clean energy technologies that can greatly change the trajectory of greenhouse gases and protect us from catastrophic change. But we have to act together, we have to act now, act differently, act as a planet and it must act in the next 10 years or we will not be able to avoid catastrophic climate change.
The good news is progress is being made.
SOUNDBITE (English) Kathy Sierra, Vice President, Sustainable Development, World Bank:
Climate smart growth and low carbon growth is already underway. We have many countries that have come to us to say give us a hand both in terms of knowledge for what works and the financing.
An example is Turkey who has a program to introduce renewables and new policies that will improve energy efficiency.
The World Development Report also cautions that climate-smart policy cannot be framed as choosing between growth and climate change.
A balance must be struck with policies that reduce vulnerability and finance the transition to low carbon growth.
Also critical is a change in behavior and public opinion.
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