From: “Cara Santos Pianesi” <cara.santos@undp.org>

November 2007

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CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS DEVELOPMENT REVERSALS

warns the UNDP Human Development Report for 2007-08 launched this week

With governments preparing to gather in Bali in December to discuss the future of the Kyoto Protocol, UNDP’s Human Development Report warned this week that the world should focus on the impacts of climate change on international development.  These impacts could bring unprecedented reversals in poverty reduction, nutrition, health and education.

The report, Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World, which was launched in Brazil on Tuesday, provides a stark account of the threat posed by global warming. It argues that the world is drifting towards a tipping point that could lock the world’s poorest citizens in a downward spiral, leaving hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats, and loss of livelihoods.

The report calls for a twin track approach that combines stringent mitigation (that is, efforts that serve to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions) to limit 21st century warming to less than 2°C, with strengthened international cooperation to help countries’ adaptation to climate change.

On mitigation, the authors call on developed countries to demonstrate leadership by cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% of 1990 levels before 2050. The report advocates a mix of carbon taxation, more stringent cap-and-trade programs, energy regulation, and international cooperation on financing for low-carbon technology transfer.

With respect to adaptation, the report warns that large differences in ability to cope with climate change are emerging as an increasingly powerful driver of widening inequalities among countries. It calls on rich countries to make climate change adaptation a central concern of international partnerships on poverty reduction.

Focusing on the 2.6 billion people surviving on less than US$2 a day, the authors warn that forces unleashed by global warming could stall and ultimately reverse progress built up over generations. Among the threats to human development identified are:

The breakdown of agricultural systems as a result of increased exposure to drought, rising temperatures, and more erratic rainfall—leaving up to 600 million more people facing malnutrition. Semi-arid areas of sub-Saharan Africa with some of the highest concentrations of poverty in the world face the danger of potential productivity losses of 26% by 2060.
An additional 1.8 billion people facing water stress by 2080, with large areas of South Asia and northern China facing a grave ecological crisis as a result of glacial retreat and changed rainfall patterns.
Displacement through flooding and tropical storm activity of up to 332 million people in coastal and low-lying areas. Over 70 million Bangladeshis, 22 million Vietnamese, and six million Egyptians could be affected by global warming-related flooding.
Emerging health risks, with an additional population of up to 400 million people facing the risk of malaria.
The report argues for reforms including:

The integration of adaptation planning into wider strategies for reducing poverty and extreme inequalities, including poverty reduction strategy papers.
Additional financing for climate proofing infrastructure and building resilience, with northern governments allocating at least $86 billion annually by 2015 (around 0.2% of their projected GDP).
Increased international support for the development of sub-Saharan Africa’s capacity to monitor climate and improve public access to meteorological information.

“Ultimately, climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who face the immediate and most severe human costs,” notes UNDP Administrator Kemal Derviş.

For more information about this year’s Human Development Report, including visual and interactive presentations of carbon emissions data, click here.

FURTHER - UNDP’S WASHINGTON OFFICE  WILL  HAVE ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 30TH, 12 PM, A ROUNDTABLE ON ABOVE REPORT AT THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE - WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF UNDP ADMINISTRATOR KEMAL DERVIS, WORLD BANK PRESIDENT ROBERT ZOELICK, AND UN FOUNDATION PRESIDENT, FORMER US SENATOR TIMOTHY WIRTH, MODERATED BY GREGG EASTERBROOK FROM BROOKINGS.

UNDP’S WORK ON CLIMATE CHANGE

UNDP capitalizes on its experience and global presence to help developing countries build vibrant economies fueled by low carbon technologies, appropriate energy policies and sustainable transport systems. UNDP helps developing countries to access the finance they need to fight climate change and pursue sustainable land use and planning activities—including improved management of natural carbon sinks and lands suitable for sequestering carbon.

UNDP is committed to enabling countries to deal with the impacts of climate change that are already happening, and to adapt their societies to advance human development in spite of them.  UNDP’s climate change work falls into four main areas:

Helping the poor adapt:  UNDP helps developing countries to adapt to climate change and work to make poor people less vulnerable. For example, UNDP is working with partners to turn the barren soil of LakeBaringo’s shores in Kenya into a money-making, environmentally-friendly enterprise for local villagers. Due to rises in temperature and less rain, livestock have grazed the lake shores to a red dust; fish have died off as water got hotter; and the local fishing industry has collapsed. Scientists think that if nothing changes, in about twenty years the lake itself will turn to swamp, then desert.

Working with local NGOs, UNDP has helped change the way villagers farm and graze their animals. Instead of communal grazing on the lake shore, the villagers now manage fenced-off plots. Hardier species of grass are being planted—grass that can then be harvested as thatching or sold to neighboring villagers to fatten animals bound for market. The project partners are also now investigating how much carbon is sequestered when bare soil is replaced by this grass, to capture the potential of Baringo farmers to contribute to global mitigation efforts.

Ensuring that developing countries have the knowledge and skills they need: UNDP works to ensure that developing countries have meaningful participation in international negotiations on climate change, enhancing their knowledge base and their capacity to make choices.

Making carbon finance work for the poor: UNDP encourages the right market conditions for sustainable development and climate change mitigation, mobilizing finance to improve mitigation and adaptation efforts, while ensuring that the benefits generated by carbon markets are directed to the poorest people who need them most. For example, this year UNDP joined forces with the banking and insurance giant Fortis on the MDG Carbon Facility, an innovative means of harnessing the vast resources of the carbon market to bring long-term sustainable development to a more diverse share of countries.

Under the terms of the partnership, UNDP will help developing countries conceive projects intended to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, and will ensure that these projects meet the Kyoto Protocol’s agreed standards and deliver real, sustainable benefits to the environment and broader human development. Fortis will then purchase and re-sell the emissions reduction credits generated by these projects. The proceeds from Fortis’ purchases will provide developing countries and communities with a new flow of resources to finance much needed investment and to promote development.

Energizing and climate-proofing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): UNDP assists developing countries to build environment, energy and climate risk management considerations right into the foundations of all efforts toward the MDGs.

UN, GOOGLE & CISCO UNVEIL ONLINE RESOURCE

IN THE FIGHT TO DECREASE GLOBAL POVERTY

This month, the UN, Google and Cisco unveiled a pioneering website that tracks progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs were agreed by world leaders from 189 countries in New York in 2000, and call for quantified, time-bound progress in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development.

The MDG Monitor is available at www.mdgmonitor.org.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the project in New York, joined by UNDP Administrator Kemal Derviş, Cisco Senior Vice President Carlos Dominguez, and Google Chief Technologist for Google Earth and Maps, Michael T. Jones.

UNDP, in its designated role as the MDG scorekeeper, initiated the MDG Monitor as an innovative means of tracking progress towards the MDGs globally and at the country level. By laying out areas of progress and the continuing challenges for the world to see, the MDG Monitor keeps the international community’s eye firmly focused on the goals, and to provide vital information for policy makers and development practitioners worldwide.

The MDG Monitor allows users to:

TRACK progress through interactive maps and country-specific profiles
LEARN about countries’ challenges and achievements and get the latest news
SUPPORT organizations working on the MDGs in over 130 developing countries.

In addition, UNDP has partnered with Google to display MDG data on top of Google Earth’s map and satellite imagery. This feature allows users to utilize Google Earth to virtually fly anywhere on the planet and explore, from above and in three dimensions, the places where work is being done to realize the MDGs.  Here, more than 300 million Google Earth users can better understand the MDGs, what it will take to achieve them, and the progress being made in each country.

The MDG Monitor has been created by UNDP in partnership with the Statistics Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), Relief Web of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and UNICEF. Google and Cisco provided funding and in-kind support. It showcases existing official data from a variety of sources including UNDP’s Human Development Reports, UNDESA’s Statistics and Population Divisions, and the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.

UNDP is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. We are on the ground in 166 countries, working with them on their own solutions to global and national development challenges. As they develop local capacity, they draw on the people of UNDP and our wide range of partners.

For additional information on the above news, please contact communications officer Cara Santos Pianesi at UNDP’s Washington Office at 202.331.9130 or  cara.santos at undp.org.

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