RIO DE JANEIRO - Developed nations must immediately help fight global warming or the world will face catastrophic floods, droughts, and other disasters, according to a UN report released yesterday.
The report said rich nations will need to provide $86 billion a year by 2015 to "strengthen the capacity of vulnerable people" to cope with climate-related risks.
"The scenario is that our generation will experience reversals on a grand scale in the areas of health, education, and poverty. For the future there is a real threat of ecological catastrophe," Kevin Watkins, the report's lead author, told reporters in Brasilia, Brazil's capital.
Half the cost, $44 billion, would go for "climate-proofing" developing nations' infrastructure, while $40 billion would help the poor cope with related risks.
The other $2 billion would go to strengthening responses to natural disasters, the report said.
The report said the United States and other rich nations should pay the biggest share.
The Bush administration said in a statement that one of its top priorities is "to alleviate poverty and spur economic growth in the developing world by modernizing energy services."
The nearly 400-page Human Development Report arrived a week before the world's nations convene in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate a new climate treaty.
At the report's release ceremony, Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called on rich nations to do their part.
"In Bali we are going to very seriously discuss the price rich countries have to pay so that poorer countries can preserve their forests," Silva said. "Because you're not going to convince a poor person in any country that he can't cut down a tree if he doesn't have the right to work and eat in exchange."
Brazil is home to around 70 percent of the
Scientists believe the rain forest can act as an enormous sponge to soak up greenhouse gases, but deforestation and burning in the rain forest releases millions of tons of carbon into the air each year, making Brazil one of the leading emitters of greenhouse gases.
The report also found that increased energy efficiency, alternative fuels, and even the reduction of trade barriers could go a long way toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The report suggested, among other measures, that a reduction of tariffs on Brazilian ethanol "would generate gains not just for Brazil, but for climate change mitigation."
Without money from developed countries, the panel found, a warmer world "could stall and then reverse human development" in the countries where 2.6 billion people live on $2 a day or less.
Developed countries, meanwhile, are failing to meet their targets under the current climate treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, for cutting greenhouse gases by 2012, the report said. France, Germany, Japan, and Britain have reduced their emissions somewhat, it said, but the European Union is falling short of its goal of a 20 percent cut by 2020.
