The World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change does well what the best World Development Reports always try to do. It provides an authoritative, comprehensive and well-written overview of the issue, with interesting boxes and well-designed graphics. It must have been especially difficult to produce this report in the face of a rapidly changing agenda in the run-up to Copenhagen. Rosina Bierbaum and Marianne Fay, who jointly led the team, deserve congratulations. The report reviews the science and the likely impacts of climate change on developing countries, and then turns to a policy agenda with three legs: ‘acting now’, ‘acting together’ and ‘acting differently’.
Chapter 1 lays out the links between climate change and development. There will be few surprises here for climate specialists, but it is useful to be reminded of the multiple and complex pathways that link climate change to human welfare, and to have a summary of the inter-generational and other ethical considerations in play. For example, crop yields in India are projected to decline by 4.5–9 per cent within the next three decades, even allowing for short-term adaptations, with consequent effects on the incomes of producers and consumers, but also on health status and therefore ability to cope with a likely increase in the prevalence of diarrhoeal disease. Chapters 2–4 deal with human vulnerability, land and water, and energy, respectively. There are more disconcerting statistics and examples: for example, a map predicting where capital cities in Europe will be in climatic terms in 2050 has Stockholm in today’s Northern Spain and Berlin in Algeria. At the same time, there are many examples of actual or potential adaptation and mitigation, whether the hunting strategies of the Inuit, drip irrigation in Morocco, or smart meters and electricity grids. This is not a technological tract, however. Market failures, institutional constraints and financing needs are constantly stressed. Chapters 5–8 deal with the global climate regime, with funding, with innovation and diffusion of new technology, and with the steps needed to overcome behavioural and institutional inertia, respectively. Some of the detail is redundant since Copenhagen, but the principles and modelling are still useful – for example, the discussion of multitrack frameworks of allocation criteria for additional funding. The last chapter is especially interesting on the design of national and local political coalitions: emphasizing fairness, for example, and looking for ‘co-benefits’ or ‘win–win’ options, whereby climate gains are linked to energy cost savings or improved public health. Overall, then, the report covers all the topics one might expect, from the debate about the discount rate in climate calculations to the inertia of the climate system and the vulnerability of food and water supply. On the policy side, the report covers such topics as the choice between cap and trade and tax regimes, financing levels and mechanisms, and approaches to behaviour change. It was published before Copenhagen, but of course has material on the Copenhagen process.
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