Coleman on how climate change threatens to make more people poor
Without policies to protect the world’s most vulnerable from crop failure, natural disasters, waterborne diseases and other impacts of climate change, 100 million more people could sink into poverty by 2030, the World Bank said.
The report unveiled yesterday is one of a growing number of high-level studies linking poverty to climate change. This one, World Bank officials said, goes further by combining findings from household surveys in 90 nations with modeling results on the impact of rising global temperatures on food prices, heat waves, floods, droughts and diseases.
Heather Coleman, climate change manager for Oxfam America, said the report highlights what many groups have been warning for years: that climate change hurts the poorest “first and worst,” while exacerbating inequality. She called on the World Bank to take immediate steps based on its own research to change its priorities.
“It is crucial that the bank’s lending policies, including those of the bank’s private-sector arm, react to their own warnings by mainstreaming climate resilience programs and support equitable, low-carbon development,” she said.