Climate change a threat to development: World Bank
Pastor Dale Morgan
Wednesday August 30, 12:46 AM Reuters
*Climate change a threat to development: World Bank*
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Climate change may be one of the biggest threats
to attempts to cutting poverty in the world's most deprived nations and
has forced the World Bank to reassess its development projects, the bank
said on Tuesday.
Studies have shown that climate change and global warming linked to
greenhouse gas emissions will reduce economic growth, development and
investment in some of the world's most vulnerable nations.
"We are already seeing the consequences of climate change ... we need to
see how we can help countries develop in a climate friendly way," Steen
Jorgensen, World Bank acting vice president for sustainable development,
told reporters in Cape Town at the release of a new report on climate
change.
The report, which looks at how the bank must react to this emerging
challenge to its development models, was released on the sidelines of
the Third Assembly of the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
The GEF is the world's biggest environment financing mechanism that
helps developing countries fund programmes to promote biodiversity,
fight climate change and land degradation.
Global warming is forecast to have a devastating effect on some
developing countries as rising sea levels wreak havoc on small island
states and more frequent and more severe droughts destroy crops on
marginal agricultural land.
Poorer nations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture
accounts for about 70 percent of employment, would be the hardest hit.
The World Bank said costs associated with global warming would eat into
development aid and projects, forcing donors to reassess spending and
infrastructure needed to help cut poverty.
"Several studies have suggested that in the absence of adaptation, the
annual costs of climate change impacts in exposed developing countries
could range from several percent to tens of percent of gross domestic
product (GDP)," the bank said.
"Much of this damage would come not gradually and incrementally through
the years but in the form of severe economic shocks," it added.
More severe storms and drought would also make investment in the
affected countries less attractive, World Bank Environment Director
Warren Evans, told Reuters.
"Almost any investment that is potentially impacted by changes in water
flow, changes in drought, changes in temperature are at risk."
It was important to help countries to better manage the climate changes
they face today so they can adapt to increasing changes in the future,
he said.