Developing Countries’ Climate Change Adaptation Costs May Double $100 Billion

Global climate is on track for changes including agreater than 2°C rise in average temperature, and that’s going to result in adaptation costs for developing countries well above the World Bank’s 2°C estimate of $70 billion by 2020 and as much as $100 billion per year by 2050, according to a report produced by ActionAid, Care, GermanWatch and WWF.

Recent estimates show that global average temperature is likely to increase between 4-6°C, which essentially means that humanity, along with all other forms of life, are committed to “permanent and irreversible loss and damage,” the NGOs assert.

“These figures do not cover the costs of hard-to-measure issues such as ecosystem degradation, misery, loss of life or capacity building, and the actual costs could easily double.” Recent studies of potential damage to ocean ecosystems alone given a 4°C rise in average global temperature would come with an economic cost of $2 trillion per year by the end of the 21st century, they note.
Into Unknown Territory

Nonetheless, the authors of Into Unknown Territory: The Limits to Adaptation and the Reality of Loss, state that “while globally we are now committed to permanent and irreversible loss and damage, we can still drastically reduce the extent of climate impacts. Bigger and faster cuts to greenhouse gas emissions can reduce the amount of damage and resources needed for climate adaptation.” The group of NGOs presented the report at the Bonn Climate Change Conference last week.

Stepping up worldwide climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts has become an urgent necessity in order to address the losses and damages likely to be caused given the current course of climate change, the NGOs conclude. They urge world leaders to augment and accelerate the pace of global climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts by taking the following four steps :- 

Read the detailed article at  :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=24252