Leaders say investing in climate change adaptation will pay off

A GROUP of leaders from business, politics and science have called for a massive investment in adapting to climate change over the next decade, arguing it would reap significant returns as countries avoid catastrophic losses and boost their economies.

The Global Commission on Adaptation, comprising dozens of prominent figures, including Microsoft principal founder Bill Gates and former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, urged governments and businesses to tackle the inevitable consequences of climate change, in addition to trying to curb it.

In their 81-page report released yesterday, the experts proposed investing $1.8 trillion (R26 trillion) between 2020 and 2030 in early warning systems, infrastructure that could withstand rising sea levels and extreme weather and in boosting agriculture to cope with droughts. Other areas they proposed investing in were bolstering scarce water resources and improving mangrove forests that provide key protection to vulnerable shorelines in developing nations.

Ban cited Bangladesh’s response to two devastating cyclones as a good example of the way countries can adapt to environmental threats.

Following the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in 1970 and 1991, Bangladesh reinforced flood defences, built shelters and trained volunteers, sharply cutting the death toll in storms.

He also pointed to the recent environmental devastation in the Bahamas as further proof of the importance of preparing for climate change.

“Just one cyclone devastated the country,” Ban said. “Of course there’s a very good way of weather forecasting but when these countries are wellprepared in infrastructures and provide some shelters, then we could have reduced as much as possible the damages that we have seen now.”

The commission said protection measures had allowed valuable land to be used in places such as the Netherlands and London that would otherwise have risked flooding. While rich countries already had the means to invest in such measures, poor nations risk losing out, the group said.

“If we don’t act now, climate change will supercharge the global gap between the haves and have-nots,” said Ban.

Christiana Figueres, a former UN official who helped forge the 2015 Paris accord, said talk on adaptation had for years been neglected, compared with efforts to mitigate, or lessen, climate change.