WASHINGTON (APP) – Global warming could elevate disease, ravage crops and push 100 million more people into poverty without action to prevent it, the World Bank warned in a disturbing new report Sunday.
The problem of climate change is already hampering efforts to reduce poverty, the Bank said, and the poorest people are already suffering more than others from lower rainfall and extreme weather tied to warming.
“Without rapid, inclusive and climate-smart development, together with emissions-reductions efforts that protect the poor, there could be more than 100 million additional people in poverty by 2030,” the Bank said.
The report, “Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty,” sounded an alarm for the need for tough action at the COP-21 Paris global summit on climate change.
On Friday, the United Nations warned that nations’ carbon-cutting pledges go nowhere near far enough to prevent warming, and that much greater commitments are needed at the November 30-December 11 summit.
The World Bank report said the most impoverished people in the world are already being hurt badly by extreme events tied to the warming trend, including heat waves, drought and flooding, because they are both more dependent on the land and live in regions more at risk that lack good public services.
“The poor are more vulnerable to climate-related shocks than wealthier people because they are more exposed, lose more in relative terms, and lack the financial systems and social safety nets that would allow them to better prepare and cope,” it said. It laid out a stark set of forecasts.
