12/6/2014
UN Says Climate Change Costs to Far Outstrip Estimates
LIMA – The amount of money developing countries will need to adapt to climate change could be double or triple the current estimate of $70 billion to $100 billion a year, the United Nations Environment Program says in a report released on Friday.
UNEP deputy director Ibrahim Thiaw and the authors of the Adaptation Gap Report outlined their findings in Lima at the UN 20th Conference on Climate Change, known as the COP20.
The researchers started from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, which relied largely on figures from the World Bank to estimate the cost of adapting to climate change in developing countries by 2050.
UNEP, working with 19 respected institutions and research centers, included new data in their analyses and modeling and concluded that the figure of $70 billion to $100 billion a year could be “a significant underestimate.”
Adaptation costs, according to UNEP, “could climb as high as $150 billion by 2025/2030 and $250-500 billion per year by 2050,” even if steps are taken to limit the 21st-century global temperature rise to 2 C above pre-industrial levels.
The UNEP report assumes that the COP20 will lead to the signing of global pact next year to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
Without such an accord, “the bill will be even bigger,” one of the report’s authors, economist Florent Baarsch, said in Lima.
While public funding for climate change adaptation reached a level of $23 billion to $26 billion in 2012-2013, the report projects the development of a substantial funding gap starting in 2020, unless new sources of finance become available.
Any agreement that is approved next year at the COP21 meeting in Paris needs to include comprehensive plans for adaptation and an expansion of the UN Green Climate Fund, Thiaw said.
He mentioned measures such as international auction of emission permits, a carbon tax and levies on the global transportation industry as options to raise the money to pay for climate change adaptation.
Those steps could generate an additional $26 billion-$115 billion a year between now and 2020, UNEP estimates.
source
UN Says Climate Change Costs to Far Outstrip Estimates
LIMA – The amount of money developing countries will need to adapt to climate change could be double or triple the current estimate of $70 billion to $100 billion a year, the United Nations Environment Program says in a report released on Friday.UNEP deputy director Ibrahim Thiaw and the authors of the Adaptation Gap Report outlined their findings in Lima at the UN 20th Conference on Climate Change, known as the COP20.
The researchers started from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, which relied largely on figures from the World Bank to estimate the cost of adapting to climate change in developing countries by 2050.
UNEP, working with 19 respected institutions and research centers, included new data in their analyses and modeling and concluded that the figure of $70 billion to $100 billion a year could be “a significant underestimate.”
Adaptation costs, according to UNEP, “could climb as high as $150 billion by 2025/2030 and $250-500 billion per year by 2050,” even if steps are taken to limit the 21st-century global temperature rise to 2 C above pre-industrial levels.
The UNEP report assumes that the COP20 will lead to the signing of global pact next year to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
Without such an accord, “the bill will be even bigger,” one of the report’s authors, economist Florent Baarsch, said in Lima.
While public funding for climate change adaptation reached a level of $23 billion to $26 billion in 2012-2013, the report projects the development of a substantial funding gap starting in 2020, unless new sources of finance become available.
Any agreement that is approved next year at the COP21 meeting in Paris needs to include comprehensive plans for adaptation and an expansion of the UN Green Climate Fund, Thiaw said.
He mentioned measures such as international auction of emission permits, a carbon tax and levies on the global transportation industry as options to raise the money to pay for climate change adaptation.
Those steps could generate an additional $26 billion-$115 billion a year between now and 2020, UNEP estimates.
source
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