RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Developed nations must immediately help fight global warming or the world will face catastrophic floods, droughts and other disasters, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.
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 real threat of ecological catastrophe,” Kevin Watkins, the report’s lead author, told reporters in Brasilia, the country’s capital.
More than half the cost, $44 billion, would go for “climate- proofing” developing nations’ infrastructure, while $40 billion would help the poor cope with climate-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.”
U.S. Democratic Rep. Edward Markey, the chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said the report showed the importance of “America moving toward the goal of 80 percent cuts in heat-trapping emissions by the middle of this century.”
“This report should give all leaders in Washington the moral imperative to back global-warming action in Congress and in the White House,” Markey said in a statement.
The nearly 400-page Human Development Report comes just a week before the world’s nations convene in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate a new climate treaty.
