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Posted on 21-10-2004
Climate Change 'To Reverse Human Progress'
Press Association, October 20, 2004
Global warming threatens to reverse human progress and make international
targets on halving world poverty by 2015 unattainable, a study published
today said.
The claim comes from charities including Greenpeace, Oxfam and Action Aid
who have joined forces, under the banner of the Working Group on Climate
Change and Development, to release the report, called Up In Smoke, in
London today.
The group's warning follows a summer in which hurricanes Jeanne and Ivan
wreaked havoc across the Caribbean and Bangladesh saw its worst flooding
for years.
In a world in which global warming is a reality, it says, such severe
weather events are likely to become more frequent and extreme - and the
poor will be hardest hit.
The group is urging the international community to take urgent action to
introduce:
· A global risk assessment of the likely costs of adaptation to climate
change in poor countries
· Cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised countries of
between 60% and 80%, relative to 1990 levels, by the middle of this
century. This goes far beyond the targets of the Kyoto protocol on climate
change.
The report says the cuts are vital in order to stop climate change running
out of control - defined as a rise in global average temperatures of more
than 2C (4F) above pre-industrial levels.
· New funding to help poor countries adapt - bearing in mind that rich
countries' subsidies to their own fossil fuel industries stood at $73bn
(£40bn) a year in the late 1990s.
· Effective and efficient arrangements to respond to the increasing burden
of climate-related disaster relief.
· Small-scale renewable energy projects promoted by governments and
community groups that can be copied and developed in order to help tackle
poverty and reduce climate change.
This move will require political commitment in the form of new funds from
governments in all countries and a major shift in priorities by the World
Bank and other development bodies, the report says.
· Coordinated local and international plans for relocating threatened
communities with appropriate political, legal and financial resources.
The report says the prime minister, Tony Blair, has signalled that he will
use the UK's presidency of the G8 nations in 2005 to bring the issues of
climate change and Africa - where many of the world's poorest countries
are found - to the top of the international political agenda.
Welcoming this commitment, the coalition says an either/or approach to
climate change and poverty reduction is not an option: the world must face
up to the inseparable challenges of poverty and a rapidly warming global
climate.
Andrew Simms, author and policy director of the New Economics Foundation,
which organised it, said: "Thousands of people, from the grassroots to
Gordon Brown, are aiming to make poverty history, but global warming has
been critically overlooked. Like a fire smouldering in the basement it
threatens to burn down all they have built up.
"To rescue the situation we need a global framework to stop climate change
that is based on equality, and we have to ensure that plans for human
development are made both climate proof and climate friendly."
Archbishop Tutu, Nobel Peace laureate and former Anglican archbishop of
Cape Town, said: "I urge governments and development and environmental
organisations to work together to find sustainable solutions to avert a
catastrophe that will exacerbate human suffering to a magnitude that
perhaps the world has not yet seen."
The environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, told BBC Radio 4's Today
programme that Mr Blair would make climate change a priority during
Britain's presidency of the G8.
Ms Beckett said: "No one can welcome what the report says, but ... I very
much welcome the direction of the report and the way that it is bringing
people with these concerns together."
She said she hoped the report would increase pressure on the US to shift
its stance on global warming.
"It is true that the present American administration - and the last one -
were not prepared to sign up to the Kyoto protocol, but we are moving on
without America," she said.
The environment secretary rejected claims that climate change could only
be halted by a switch to nuclear power.
The government has not ruled out the future development of nuclear power,
but Ms Beckett made it clear that she did not accept the argument that it
was a "clean" fuel because it did not produce carbon emissions.
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