Climate Change and Poverty

 The latest UNDP's Human Development Report: Fighting Climate Change, was launched last week. 

 This gloomy report defines Climate Change as the defining human development challenge of the 21st Century, and asks for urgent measures now.

 

Failure to respond to that challenge will stall and then reverse international efforts to reduce poverty. The poorest countries and most vulnerable citizens will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks, even though they have contributed least to the problem.

 The Human Development Report 2007/2008 shows that climate change is not just a future scenario. Increased exposure to droughts, floods and storms is already destroying opportunity and reinforcing inequality. Meanwhile, there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that the world is moving towards the point at which irreversible ecological catastrophe becomes unavoidable. Business-as-usual climate change points in a clear direction: unprecedented reversal in human development in our lifetime, and acute risks for our children and their grandchildren.

A summary and the complete report are available on-line.

 Related: the World Bank brings a low-carbon growth strategy to Bali

 An editorial in The New York Times discussed yesterday the Climate in Bali and Washington

 More information at the World Bank's Climate Change website