In a report (pdf) released on Sunday, November 8, the global organization warned that if the two problems weren’t tackled together, 100 million more people could find themselves facing “extreme” poverty by 2030.
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The World Bank report, released weeks before the climate summit in Paris, echoes arguments made last June in Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change.
Such shocks could wipe out hard-won gains, leading to irreversible losses, driving people back into poverty, particularly in Africa and South Asia, it said.
“As the world continues to warm in the coming decades, however, we will see more and more years passing the one degree marker – eventually it will become the norm”.
“We will need to act fast because as climate impacts increase, so will the difficulty and cost of eradicating poverty”, said John Roome, senior director for climate change at the World Bank.
“…The bank’s estimate of 100 million more poor by 2030 is on top of 900 million expected to be living in extreme poverty if development progresses slowly”. Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the most vulnerable to climate change, notes the report, naming Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Angola and Uganda as the countries at great risk. The hard news according to the report is that Pakistan is among those countries where the effect of climate change would reduce the income of the bottom 40 percent by more than 8 percent.
President Obama in Kotzebue, Alaska, on September 2, a journey above the Arctic Circle to survey impacts of climate change on native villages.
Health effects-higher incidence of malaria, diarrhoea and stunting-and the labour productivity effects of high temperatures are the next-strongest drivers.
The study also highlights that it is important that future programmes against climate change should not promote “new vulnerabilities” that may negatively affect people.
The report also calls for “an all-out push” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but in a way that “does not burden the poor”.
In poor countries, support from the global community will be essential to accomplish many of these measures, according to the report.
Limiting climate change to an increase of 2°C would cut their exposed population by 64 million.
Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd, who is attending the Paris talks, said: “Climate change is one of the most serious threats we face, not just to the environment, but to our economic prosperity, poverty eradication and global security”.
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However, the report indicates that “these same policies can be created to protect, and even benefit, poor people – for instance, by using fiscal resources from environmental taxes to improve social protection”.
