UN: Global outlook necessary to adapt to climate change
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Adjusting world economic systems to help countries, particularly the less developed ones, adapt to climate change will be essential in upcoming years, a report form the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) has concluded while the high-level segment of the DESA entered its third day Wednesday.
The annual World Economic and Social Survey (WESS 2010), titled "Retooling for Global Development," endeavored to look at long- term patterns in economic and social issues around the world including funding to combat environmental problems.
The week-long segment of the DESA was opened in the UN Monday to discuss progress in reaching the Millennium Development Goals ( MDGs) by 2015 and implications of the current financial climate towards the internationally established targets.
According to WESS 2010, the impacts of climate change will put a significant economic and financial burden on the inhabitants of less developed countries that mostly live in rural areas and often depend on the land and climate events directly for their livelihoods and their food. In addition, procuring green technology and alternative energy will become vital, but sometimes costly, for these poorer nations.
"In order to combine and to allow for poverty reduction based in part on rapid economic growth with fighting climate change we will need major transformations in our energy sectors and the technologies for production that we are using," said Rob Vos, Director of the Development Policy and Analysis Division of UN- DESA at a press conference Tuesday.
"That in turn will require major adjustments in the trade system to allow for effective technology transfers and addressing and adjusting intellectual property rights and regulation accordingly as much as the large financial transfers will be needed."
Large amounts of financial resources, in addition to intellectual capital and technology, will also need to be coordinated in the future to combat climate change. Currently net financial transfers are moving from poorer to richer countries, according to Vos.
This is a problem for the less developed countries because adapting to climate change "would require them to absorb new resources rather than sending them to the rest of the world," said Vos.
In order to coordinate economic policy and the movement of capital internationally and catalyze discussion and action on climate change and the economy, WESS indicated that summit of the Group of 20 (G20) largest economies in the world and other ad hoc meetings may not be sufficient. The report recommended the creation of a new agency.
"We think it will be very important for the international community to think of a global economic coordination council that could set out guidelines that would seek and ensure the coherence between each of the more specialized areas of global economic governance in aid, trade, finance, and the environment," Vos said.
