February 14, 2007—More than 100 legislators and government officials from the 20 largest energy consuming countries bring the climate change debate to Capitol Hill today in what organizers hope could be a step toward closer global collaboration on the issue. The debate at the Legislators Forum on Climate Change isn’t about whether climate change is real—the forum follows on the heels of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which concluded there was a 90 percent chance human actions have been a major contributor to global warming. It’s about how best to reduce the world’s risk of severe impacts from a changing climate and get countries to work together to stop the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. To that end, the forum brings together delegates from the G8 (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United States, Canada and Japan) plus 5 countries (China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa), which together produce 75 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. Seven of the G8 countries signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But the world’s largest emitter, the United States, did not agree to meet greenhouse gas emission targets. And the second largest emitter of CO2—China—as well as another larger producer, India, were as developing countries not required to join the agreement. “This is a global problem, and we all have to act,” says former World Bank Chief Economist Sir Nicholas Stern, author of an influential report on the economic risk of climate change and a keynote speaker at the forum. “People in all nations of the world have moved strongly in the last few months to recognize that this is a problem of great seriousness. There’s an increased preparedness to act, both in the reducing of emissions…and in adapting to a changing climate. “But are they ready to act quickly enough, and will they act in a way that is collaborative across nations and regions? We’ll have to find out,” says Stern. Europe, the United States, India, China and other major CO2 emitting countries need to “move together” to tackle the problem, he adds. “And that means recognizing what everybody else is doing and asking together, how do we scale up? As opposed to saying, well, I’m not doing anything because they’re not doing anything.” Bank Can Help Financial institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have a “great deal to contribute in deepening that international understanding,” as well as helping countries prepare for and adapt to climate change and “rise to the challenge of maintaining growth while reducing carbon,” he says. A strategy for achieving that goal is detailed in the Bank’s Investment Framework for Clean Energy and Development, developed in 2006 at the request of G8 countries.
Stern delivers his message to the forum today. Other keynote speakers include German Chancellor Angela Merkel (by video), World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, founder of the Virgin Group Sir Richard Branson, and US Senators. The forum is part of the G8+5 Climate Change Dialogue launched in February 2006 at the House of Commons in the UK with the support of the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Vice President of the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, the German Government, the European Commissioner for Environment, the National People's Congress of China, the Pew Centre for Global Climate Change (USA), British Petroleum, Holcim, and Vattenfall. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Changewas released by the UK government in October as the first comprehensive analysis of the potential economic impact of climate change. The report says the benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs. It estimates that if nations don’t act to stop the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in the next two decades, the overall costs and risks of climate change would be equivalent to losing at least 5 percent of GDP each year. In contrast, acting now would cost about 1 percent of world GDP each year. The Stern Review predicts poor people in developing countries would be the worst affected by such problems as drought, floods, hurricanes or rising sea levels that would likely become much worse in the second half of this century and the next century as the earth continues to warm and polar ice melts. A new World Bank report estimates a one meter rise in sea levels would turn at least 60 million people in the developing world into environmental refugees. Stern says the Bank can play a key role in “showing what can be done in terms of adaptation and reducing carbon emissions through the right kinds of investments and economic activities, helping build the right kind of incentive structures.” “It’s a challenge which the World Bank is very well structured to help and to change the way in which we look at these issues and change the way in which we go about our economic activities,” he says.
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