President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, is warning that the
combined crises of planetary climate change and rising global inequality
in a highly interconnected world will lead to the rise of widespread
upheaval as the world's poor rise up and clashes over access to clean
water and affordable food result in increased violence and political
conflict.
As Jim Yong Kim warned of the risks of climate change, the UN said food
prices had risen to their highest in almost a year. In an interview
ahead of a bank summit next week, Kim predicts that battles over food
and water will break out in the next five to ten years as a direct
result of a warming planet that world leaders have done too little to
address, despite warnings from the environmental community and
scientists.
"The water issue is critically related to climate change," Kim told
the Guardian. "People say that carbon is the currency of climate change.
Water is the teeth. Fights over water and food are going to be the most
significant direct impacts of climate change in the next five to 10
years. There's just no question about it."
Despite the acknowledgement of the problem, however, and even as he made mea culpa
for past errors by the powerful financial institution he now runs
(including a global push to privatize drinking water resources and
utilities), Kim laid the blame on inaction on the very people who have
done the most to alert humanity to the crisis, saying that both climate
change activists and informed scientists have not done enough to offer a
plan to address global warming in a way he deems "serious."
He said: "They [the climate change community] kept saying, 'What do
you mean a plan?' I said a plan that's equal to the challenge. A plan
that will convince anyone who asks us that we're really serious about
climate change, and that we have a plan that can actually keep us at
less than 2C warming. We still don't have one."
Kim also acknowledged the threat of unaddressed inequality, saying
that access to the internet (mostly through smartphones) in the
developing world has created conditions where everyone on the planet
knows how other people live, which means that the "next huge social
movement" could erupt anywhere at anytime.
"It's going to erupt to a great extent because of these
inequalities," he continued and said heads of state from around the
world have called for "a much, much deeper understanding of the
political dangers of very high levels of inequality."
The question remains: Do these acknowledgements of the dual crisis of
a warming, less equal planet from the leader of the World Bank really
translate into a transformation of the institution that is well known as
one of the key proponents of the policies and projects that have led us
to this point?
According to a new report the World Resources Institute, the answer remains: No.
The new analysis from WRI says that despite Kim's recent rhetoric and
focus on "sustainability" for the bank, the reality "shows that while
the World Bank has successfully addressed a number of important economic
and social risks in its projects, it is falling short in recognizing
climate risks."
Out of 60 recent World Bank projects assessed, according to
researchers, "only 25 percent included features that took climate
change risks into account. This shortfall could leave communities
vulnerable to extreme weather, sea level rise, and other climate
impacts—impacts that threaten to undermine the World Bank’s efforts to
eliminate poverty."
Jon Queally
from here
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