Climate change a threat to development: World Bank

Tue Aug 29, 2006 12:48pm ET
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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 programs 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.   Continued...

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