FIGHTING POVERTY: The World Bank now argues that combating climate change will be required to make any progress in reducing poverty.
Image: Flickr/CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture
The atmosphere is barreling toward a 4-degree-Celsius rise in global temperatures by the end of this century -- a world in which some nations may simply be unable to cope with or recover from disasters, a sweeping new World Bank study warns.
If a 4-degree rise over preindustrial temperatures happens, the results for developing nations will be devastating. Warming over land could reach as high as 10 degrees Celsius, or about 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Extreme heat waves will become the new normal. Cities in the poorest of countries, like Bangladesh, Mozambique and Vietnam, will bear the brunt of sea-level rise.
Meanwhile, the authors noted, the full scale of crop loss and disease -- particularly throughout Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean -- has yet to be calculated but will almost certainly be crippling.
"A 4-degree warmer world can and must be avoided. We need a global response equal to the scale of the problem," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in unveiling the report, "Turn Down the Heat."
He argued that because the most vulnerable people in the least developed countries suffer the brunt of disasters, adaptation -- helping communities become more resilient or adjust to new weather patterns -- cannot take the place of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"We will never end poverty if we don't tackle climate change," Kim said.
First policy change from Kim
The report, largely a technical study that summarizes the existing literature on warming impacts, is the first major work on climate change to come out of the bank since Kim took the reins in July. He and World Bank Vice President of Sustainability Rachel Kyte said the goal was to establish the scientific underpinnings for acting on climate change.
Some analysts criticized the report for failing to address what the bank itself -- the world's leading institution charged with reducing poverty -- should be doing to help avert catastrophic warming. But many also praised Kim for raising the profile of the issue at the World Bank -- and throwing cold water on the oft-used argument that dealing with climate change is at odds with development.
"Kim is basically saying that he can't fulfill his mission, the mission of the World Bank to pull people out of poverty, if the climate is changing so fast," said Mike MacCracken, chief scientist for climate change programs at the Climate Institute, who reviewed of the report.
"I think he's taking a very appropriate step in trying to say, 'I've got a real challenge here,'" MacCracken said.
The report warns that a 4-degree temperature rise is all too possible. While the United States, China, India and other major global warming polluters pledged via the U.N. negotiations to cut carbon, various studies have shown that even if all of those promises were met, the world would still be on a trajectory of well more than 3 degrees Celsius.
The World Bank report says that if all the pledges are met, there remains a 20 percent chance of exceeding a 4-degree-Celsius rise in temperatures from preindustrial levels by 2100. If those pledges are not met, the likelihood is even higher -- more than 40 percent -- of warming exceeding 4 degrees by the end of the century or even decades sooner.
Concerns about sea-level rise increase
Kyte said that a growing number of countries are asking for help in incorporating impending climate impacts into their economic options. Citing Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where the government spent $2 billion on a flood protection plan that "proved completely inadequate," Kyte said taking the 4-degree science into account is already a must for economic planning. Nations from the Philippines to Gabon are starting to understand that.
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8 Comments
Add CommentClear-cutting tropical forests is blamed (by some) for much of greenhouse gas emission, as much as from fuelling all the world's autos. OK, might be true. Brazil, are you listening? If the heating-up world will hit tropics especially hard, as I imagine, should tropical countries (Brazil) be working especially hard to slow and to prevent GW?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI gather this is not happening. But, then, not much is happening in this world of short-time-line-driven politics.
The World Bank has got to be the sleaziest bunch of lying hypocrites on the planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"..World Bank board members "do everything we can not to invest in coal. Everything we possibly can."..."
Yep, that's why they are financing giant lignite dirt-burners all over the developing world. South Africa had their own indigenous Nuclear Power program, focused on the super-safe, proliferation resistant, meltdown proof, high burn, high efficiency, pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) but ran out of money to finish the development. The cretins at the World Bank refused to finance the development but was quick to dump $billions into a giant smoke-belching 4800MW Coal power plant there.
Oh & they finance some Wind Turbines & Solar Panels which don't do ZIP to reduce emissions - just greenwashing & spin. Yep, they support "green energy", yep.
And same in India with its own successful rapidly expanding indigenous Nuclear Program, ultimately focused on thorium, but the World Bank pimps, have refused to fund it, but quick to pour $billions into new Coal power plants in India.
And again Argentina & China - same hypocrisy.
If the World Bank's "Green Energy" spin & disinformation was really true, then why has the wealthiest and most technologically sophisticated nation in Europe, with 20 yrs of religious devotion to "Green Energy", just built a giant 2300 MW lignite dirt-burning monster with another 22 to follow? Why didn't they build "Green Energy" instead? Anyone who still believes in that hype anymore needs a serious brain examination.
The ONLY way to save our economies, end poverty and severely reduce GHG emissions is with Nuclear Energy. That is just a fact. The World Bank is more interested into making its super-rich Big Oil patrons richer than it is in reducing poverty or GHG emissions.
This is making the world bank out to be something that wants people to be out of poverty for the good of them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey may get rid of poverty, but they increase the debt on anyone they "help". It is their goal to put every country they "help" to a debt at 100% of their GDP.
They are only in it to maximize profit.
And "Growth"? Do we really need more growth? The world is finite, growth needs to stop at some time. That word, and the ideology as a whole, are from last century.
Economists destroy our habitat for an irrational, intangible invention "Money". They also have far too much power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnce money becomes an end goal (we can create almost infinite amounts of it from nothing, money is just numbers on computers)our species faces extinction. Population is the killing factor no one wants to mention. Economist want populations to increase way beyond sustainable levels. The current world population is unsustainable. Scientists may release artificially created microbes similar to Chlamydia that are non-pathogenic and cause infertility, but it is too late now.
We are going to reduce poverty while gaining another two billion people over the next quarter century, what a joke.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe need a carbon tax even though that would indeed raise the cost of producing just about everything and penalize domestically made products relative to imports from countries that impose no such tax. It would be justified in my view to impose tariffs on those imports equivalent to the cost that was avoided through the absence of a carbon tax.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCouldn't agree more. Money has become the 'only' game in town. We ignore the disaster we are creating in the environment that sustains us and ridicule the climate experts for telling us whats happening. After years of causing the extintion of other specises we are now starting on our own. One has to question just how 'intelligent' we really are. We need the earth...it doesn't need us!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI couldn't agree more. The world needs steep carbon taxes.
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