Tearfund Welcomes New Climate Change Report

Tearfund has welcomed a new climate change report due to be published at the Nairobi conference on Thursday which warns that millions of people are set to lose if world governments fail to act on climate change now.

Overcoming the Barriers warns that lives will be needlessly jeopardised and billions of dollars wasted if governments at the UN Climate Change Conference in Nairobi fail to commit more money now to help poorer countries adapt to global warming.

The report also urged governments to make climate change central to development projects around the world.

Speaking on the eve of the report's launch at the Nairobi talks, Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director of Tearfund, says: "The good news is that governments accept that poor countries suffer the most from global warming and need help, and they have woken up to the fact that climate change must become integral to development plans worldwide. The bad news is that unless they agree rapidly how to do it and who should pay, we will see needless suffering on a growing scale. That is one of the great challenges facing this conference."

Overcoming the Barriers reviews the progress that governments and donors have made towards incorporating climate change into development work. The report says the process in most developing countries is only just beginning as awareness increases. It also calls for accelerated action around the globe.

Mr Atkins warned that billions of dollars could be wasted if governments fails to make the right moves now: "Before governments embark on major agricultural projects, they must understand how increasingly erratic rainfall will affect water supply and crop yields. And as governments invest in health systems, they must be confident they will cope with changing patterns of disease linked to climate change.

"By the end of the decade this 'climate-proofing' of development must become the norm, not the exception.

"Without urgent action billions of dollars of aid money could be wasted and many lives needlessly jeopardised."

The report highlights a number of measures that governments and donors can take to accelerate progress towards the 'climate-proofing' of development, including the provision of better climate information, including short-term and seasonal weather forecasting and disaster early-warning systems.

The report also spoke of the need to locate responsibility for climate change within government in a powerful, central department and not solely in environment or meteorology, as well as the need to make the economic case for immediate inclusion of climate change into development.

Mr Atkins summed up: "The simple fact is that development will not be sustainable unless we take climate change fully into account".