World Bank tells rich to pay their climate damage bill
By Marian Wilkinson, Environment Editor | smh.com.au | 16 September
The cost of climate change in the developing world will be up to $US470 billion ($547 billion) each year by 2030, and wealthy countries such as Australia should help pay to fix it, the World Bank says.
Calling climate change "a deeply unfair issue", the World Development Report 2010 finds that rich countries are responsible for two-thirds of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.
But it concludes that poorer countries in South Asia and Africa are expected to bear the brunt of the impact through drought, sea level rise and extreme weather which could permanently cut up to 5 per cent a year from their annual consumption and slash their food production.
The report's co-director, Rosina Bierbaum, told reporters yesterday that while the costs of coping with climate change were huge, "we can't afford not to address it.
But it absolutely will not be cheap and it will not be easy."
The report will set the scene for next week's Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh where the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and other world leaders are expected to discuss how to fund the developing world to adapt to climate change and employ new technology to clean up their energy industries.
The highly contentious debate has stalled the global climate negotiations. Mr Rudd, along with the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, favours using market mechanisms like carbon trading to invest in clean energy in the developing world. But the report says this will not be enough.
The bank's chief economist, Justin Lin, said other sources of revenue, including a carbon tax on international air travel and shipping, or raising revenue from auctioning carbon permits in developed countries, should be examined.
The report's central message is a "climate-smart world is within our reach" but will only happen if the world acts now, acts together and acts differently.
"Coping with climate change will require all the innovation and ingenuity that the human race is capable of," the report finds, but it will require large shifts in lifestyle, an energy revolution and a transformation in the way forests and agricultural lands are managed.
First published by Smh.com.au on September 16 2009
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