Climate change 'biggest threat to development'

Climate change may be one of the biggest threats to attempts to reduce poverty in the most deprived nations and has forced the World Bank to reassess its development projects.

It says 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 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, said on 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 and 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 per cent 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 per cent to tens of per cent of gross domestic product," the bank said.

"Much of this damage would come not gradually and incrementally through the years but in the form of severe economic shocks."

Bank environment director Warren Evans said it was important to help countries likely to be affected to better manage climate change today so they could cope with increasing changes in the future.

- REUTERS