Climate change to hit poor hardest - UN

US:Climate change will have the biggest impact on the world's poor, who face unprecedented reversals in health, education, nutrition and the reduction of poverty unless its worst effects are mitigated, a United Nations report warns.

The report from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) calls for deep cuts in CO2 emissions to limit warming this century to less than two degrees centigrade, as well as more funding to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

UNDP's Human Development Report 2007 is devoted to climate change and its impact on the developing world, and is intended as a sequel to earlier international reports focusing on the scientific and economic aspects of the problem.

With international governments preparing to gather in Bali shortly to discuss the future of the Kyoto Protocol, this report warns that the world is drifting towards a "tipping point" that could lock its poorest countries and their poorest citizens in a downward spiral, leaving hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats and a loss of livelihoods.

"Ultimately, climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who face the immediate and most severe human costs," said UNDP administrator Kemal Dervis.

The report calls on developed countries to demonstrate leadership by cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050. It advocates a mix of carbon taxation, energy regulation and international co-operation on financing for low-carbon technology transfer.

People around the world are preparing for floods, droughts and other natural disasters in ways largely dictated by their wealth or poverty, and inequality in the ability to deal with climate change is emerging as an increasingly powerful driver of wider inequalities between and within countries, according to the report.

"We are issuing a call to action, not providing a counsel of despair," said lead author Kevin Watkins. "Allowing the window of opportunity to close would represented a moral and political failure without precedent in human history." Among the threats to development identified in the report are:

- a breakdown of agriculture caused by drought, rising temperatures and more erratic rainfall, leaving up to 600 million more people facing malnutrition;

- an additional 1.8 billion people facing water stress by 2080, particularly in south Asia and northern China;

- displacement through flooding and tropical storms of up to 332 million people in coastal and low-lying areas;

- an additional 400 million people facing the risk of malaria.

The report also contains the annual human development index - a measure of quality of life based on life expectancy, educational enrolment and national income. This year, Iceland has passed Norway to take the top spot on the index, with sub-Saharan African countries again occupying the bottom places. The US slipped from eighth to 12th position.

The index, based on 2005 figures, finds that all 22 countries falling into the "low human development" category are in sub-Saharan Africa, with Sierra Leone coming last. In 10 of these countries, two children in five will not reach the age of 40. The Japanese have the longest life expectancy, at 82.3 years, and Zambians the lowest, at 40.5 years.

In 16 countries the human development index was lower than in 1990, while in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Zimbabwe it was lower than in 1975, according to the report.