World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change

“……Poverty reduction and sustainable development remain core global priorities. A quarter of the population of developing countries still lives on less than $1.25 a day. One billion people lack clean drinking water; 1.6 billion, electricity; and 3 billion, adequate sanitation. A quarter of all developing country children are malnourished. Addressing these needs must remain the priorities both of developing countries and of development aid—recog­nizing that development will get harder, not easier, with climate change.
Yet climate change must urgently be addressed. Climate change threatens all countries, with developing countries the most vulnerable. Estimates are that they would bear some 75 to 80 percent of the costs of damages caused by the changing climate. Even 2°C warming above preindustrial temperatures—the minimum the world is likely to experience—could result in permanent reductions in GDP of 4 to 5 percent for Africa and South Asia. Most developing countries lack sufficient financial and technical capacities to manage increas­ing climate risk. They also depend more directly on climate-sensitive natural resources for income and well-being. And most are in tropical and subtropical regions already subject to highly variable climate.
Economic growth alone is unlikely to be fast or equitable enough to counter threats from climate change, particularly if it remains carbon intensive and accelerates global warming. So climate policy cannot be framed as a choice between growth and climate change. In fact, climate-smart policies are those that enhance development, reduce vulnerability, and finance the transition to low-carbon growth paths.
A climate-smart world is within our reach if we act now, act together, and act differently than we have in the past:
- Acting now is essential or else options disappear and costs increase as the world com­mits itself to high-carbon pathways and largely irreversible warming trajectories.
- Acting together is key to keeping the costs down and effectively tackling both adaptaption and mitigation.
- Acting differently is required to enable a sustainable future in a changing world. In the next few decades, the world’s energy systems must be transformed so that global emissions drop 50 to 80 percent….”
http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/EXT...