Climate Change

Fighting Black Carbon as Oceans & Temperatures Rise

Last week, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography released data showing that CO2 atmospheric levels had briefly passed 400 parts per million (ppm) and were close to surpassing that level for sustained periods of time. This is bad news. At 450 ppm, scientists anticipate the world will be 2 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times, and world leaders have agreed that’s a point of dangerous consequences.

Along with this grim news came important new research findings from Professor V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution at the University of California, San Diego, and other researchers regarding short-lived climate pollutants – black carbon, methane tropospheric ozone and some hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). While we continue – and must continue – to hammer away at reducing CO2 emissions, their work supports the argument that also reducing these short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) can have an immediate effect on slowing warming and the resulting sea-level rise.

If you want to fundamentally change how countries use energy, value their natural environments, or combat climate change, you have to talk to the people who hold the purse strings.

That’s what we’re doing this week. Finance ministers from countries around the world are in Washington for the annual World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings. We’re talking with them about these issues and more as we help countries shift to more sustainable development.

Underlying everything: climate change. This isn’t just an environmental challenge – it’s a fundamental threat to economic development and the fight against poverty. I can’t repeat that often enough. If the world does not take bold action now, a disastrously warming planet threatens to put prosperity out of reach for millions and roll back decades of development.

Available 日本語

Building a sea wall in Kiribati. Lauren Day/World Bank

These are exciting days at the World Bank Group. We are getting ready to receive delegates from our 188 member countries, who will gather in Washington for the WBG-IMF Spring Meetings.

It is an especially important time for the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) and the disaster risk management team at the World Bank, as we prepare to host – together with the European Union, the Government of Japan, and USAID – the fourth round of the Resilience Dialogue. This round we are focusing on the role disaster and climate resilience can play in the post-2015 development framework.

Disaster and climate risks were not addressed as part of the original framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Recent experience has provided countless examples of the devastating impacts of disasters – impacts that go well beyond dollar signs or GDP statistics. It has become evident that disaster and climate risks are impediments to the achievement of poverty reduction and sustainable development goals, and should therefore be integrated in the development framework that will replace the MDGs.

Available in Español, Français, عربي

Speaking ahead of the upcoming World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings, Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim called on the international community to seize the historic opportunity presented by favorable economic conditions in developing countries and end extreme poverty by 2030. This is an exciting goal, and success in achieving it has become possible. Kim pointed to the International Development Association, or IDA, the Bank’s fund for the poorest, as central to the tremendous effort needed to make this happen.

Every three years, development funders and borrowing country representatives meet to deliberate and agree on IDA’s strategic direction, financing, and allocation rules, and we just kicked off this process for the 17th “replenishment” of IDA (which provides development financing for the period July 1, 2014-June 30, 2017).

Two days of open discussion in Paris on March 20-21 with both investors and borrowers covered the complex development agenda faced by IDA countries, as well as the fund’s strategic approach to dealing with these issues. We worked to chart a way forward for IDA to most effectively improve the lives of the roughly 1 billion people in IDA countries still living on less than $1.25 a day.

In two weeks, economic policymakers from around the world will gather in Washington, D.C., for the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings. As has been the case for the past five years, there will be much talk of economic crisis and of strategies to restore confidence, kick start growth, and create jobs. There is growing evidence that we are on the right track, but this agenda still requires much more work.

The meetings, though, also offer an occasion to look beyond the short term crisis-fighting measures. It is a chance for leaders to adopt a long-term perspective and assess where we stand and where we are headed.

If they do, they will see that today we are at a moment of historic opportunity. For the end of absolute poverty, a dream which has enticed and driven humanity for centuries, is now within our grasp.

Find a good longread on development? Tweet it to @worldbank with the hashtag #longreads.

China’s prospects stirred interest as the BRICs met in South Africa and a new survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found China on course to become the world’s largest economy by 2016. The OECD study says China has “weathered the global economic and financial crisis of the past five years better than virtually any OECD country” and should be able to continue catching up and improving living standards over the next decade. While the OECD study says China needs to shift to more environmentally friendly modes of consumption and production, a new Climate Institute/GE Low-Carbon Competitiveness Index finds that France, Japan, China, South Korea and the United Kingdom are “currently best positioned to prosper in the global low-carbon economy.”

Climate Institute/GE Low-Carbon Competitiveness Index

Available in Español, Français, 中文

There is hardly a better place to focus on the ocean than Cape Town, South Africa. With the dramatic Twelve Apostles mountain range as a backdrop, only a narrow street separated us from the Atlantic coastline embracing this city. On March 20, I attended the first meeting of the Global Ocean Commission, a new independent task force of international leaders looking for ways to protect the high seas.

When Minister Trevor Manuel of South Africa invited me to join as a commissioner, I did not hesitate. As an Indonesian, I understand all too well both the predicament and the value of the ocean. At the World Bank, we have been participating in the development of a Global Partnership for Oceans (GPO), a coalition of over 125 groups aiming to increase investment and collaboration in a healthier ocean that can do more to reduce poverty.

The Global Ocean Commission was launched on February 12, 2013, to develop policy ideas and build international coalitions to reverse the degradation of the high seas – the part of the ocean that is not under the jurisdiction of any one nation. For that reason, the commission is a powerful complement to the GPO, which focuses largely on supporting countries’ efforts to better manage their coastal waters.

If you were to ask me what our biggest challenge is, I would say it is to convince politicians who have to grapple with day-to-day domestic issues that the ocean matters.

During my stay in Cape Town, I listened to a lot of conclusive science and saw a lot of convincing economic data. Let’s be clear, the facts are stark. If we don’t act, the ocean’s future—and by extension ours—is bleak.

Here it is in a nutshell: One billion people in developing countries depend on fish as their primary source of protein, and 350 million jobs are linked to the health of the oceans. Yet 57% of ocean fisheries are fully exploited. Another 30% are over-exploited, depleted or recovering. An increasing share of important marine habitats like coral reefs, mangroves and sea grass beds are being destroyed or degraded. You can learn about the impact in this video.

Read this post in Español, Français, 中文, عربي

Walking out of Keflavik airport as the arctic breeze hit my face at 50 km per hour, I thought to myself, “I love my job.” A job that makes a tropical citizen like me enjoy the hospitality of the very warm Icelanders and allows me to learn from their experience is hard to top. With 320,000 citizens and just the size of the U.S. state of Kentucky, subpolar Iceland has a lot to teach us development practitioners.

We are only beginning to put together a vision for how to deal with the dilemma of a warming-- and therefore more unpredictable and punishing--climate and ever increasing energy needs. But Iceland has long ago put its mind to the challenge and now lives productively and peacefully in an environment that throws at it tremendous challenges and great gifts.

My appreciation of Iceland's strategy to make use of its environment and harness its renewable energy rose as I visited Hellisheiði Geothermal Plant. Feeling the rumbles of the earth and looking at the steam that puffed from its heart against the backdrop of a volcanic landscape, I was in awe both of nature and the people who have embraced its imposing power.

Flags at the United Nations. UN Photos

This morning, I had the honor of speaking to the UN Security Council about an increasingly dangerous threat facing cities and countries around the world, a threat that, more and more, is influencing everything that they and we do: climate change.

World Bank President Jim Kim is in Russia right now talking with G20 finance ministers about the same thing – the need to combat climate change. Every day, we’re hearing growing concerns from leaders around the world about climate change and its impact.

If we needed any reminder of the immediacy and the urgency of the situation, Australia Foreign Minister Bob Carr and our good friend President Tong of Kiribati spoke by video of the security implication of climate effects on the Pacific region.

Can emerging markets make economic growth compatible with climate action? Can the trade-off between growth and rising emissions be influenced by policy?

For a country like Turkey – with the lowest carbon footprint in the OECD (around 5 tons per person in 2008), but also one of the highest rates of growth of carbon emissions over the past two decades – these are not idle questions. A recent talk with a senior Turkish policy maker about how Turkey is adjusting its policies to meet the challenge of growing green left me feeling optimistic about the role Turkey can play in this discussion. I believe that for Turkey, growing green is an opportunity. Let me explain why I think so: