KEY MESSAGES

Climate change poses a real threat to the developing world. Unchecked it will become a major obstacle to continued poverty reduction.

Developing countries are especially vulnerable to climate change because of their geographic exposure, low incomes, and greater reliance on climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture. Ethiopia, for example, already has far greater hydrological variability than North America but less than 1% of the artificial water storage capacity per capita. Together these mean that impacts on developing countries are proportionally greater and the ability to adapt smaller.

Many developing countries are already struggling to cope with their current climate. For low-income countries, major natural disasters today can cost an average of 5% of GDP.

For example:

Health and agricultural incomes will be under particular threat from climate change.

• Falling farm incomes will increase poverty and reduce the ability of households to invest in a better future and force them to use up meagre savings just to survive.

• Millions of people will potentially be at risk of climate-driven heat stress, flooding, malnutrition and water related and vector borne diseases. For example, dengue transmission in South America may increase by 2 to 5 fold by the 2050s.

• The cost of climate change in India and South East Asia could be as high as a 9–13% loss in GDP by 2100 compared with what could have been achieved in a world without climate change.

• […]