Climate Change and the World Bank. (November 20, 2012)

The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, has once again highlighted  the threats posed by climate change. A report, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided issued this past Sunday is introduced by Dr Kim: "The lack of action on climate change not only risks putting prosperity out of reach of millions of people in the developing world, it threatens to roll back decades of sustainable development... It is my hope that this report shocks us into action. Even for those of us already committed to fighting climate change, I hope it causes us to work with much more urgency."

As ScienceInsider's Dennis Normile notes: "The report focuses on problems that are likely to disproportionately hit developing countries: coastal inundation from rising sea levels, plummeting food production and associated malnutrition, unprecedented heat waves, increasing fresh water scarcity, more frequent and intense tropical cyclones, and the loss of biodiversity. The report notes that some of the risks have not been thoroughly studied. For example, it says there is as yet no comprehensive investigation of the ecological, human, and economic consequences of the collapse of coral reef ecosystems due to warmer and more acidic oceans. Climate change is likely to hit hardest the countries that have the least capacity to adapt and to increase poverty rates throughout Africa as well as in countries such as Mexico and Bangladesh."

However, to date the World Bank has not set down the approaches it may undertake so that "a 4°C world can be avoided and we can likely hold warming to below 2°C". the report states.