Up In Smoke: Climate change could reverse human progress

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | :



This precis of the report wherein various charities including Greenpeace, Oxfam and Action Aid [acting as the "Working Group on Climate Change and Development"]. The group urges the international community to take urgent action to introduce:

�" A global risk assessment of the likely costs of adaptation to climate change in poor countries

� Cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised countries of between 60% and 80%, relative to 1990 levels, by the middle of this century. This goes far beyond the targets of the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

� New funding to help poor countries adapt - bearing in mind that rich countries' subsidies to their own fossil fuel industries stood at $73bn �(40bn) a year in the late 1990s.

� Effective and efficient arrangements to respond to the increasing burden of climate-related disaster relief.

� Small-scale renewable energy projects promoted by governments and community groups that can be copied and developed in order to help tackle poverty and reduce climate change."