The World Bank says that a move to climate-friendly practices would spawn the added benefit of job creation and better health for the world.
In its Adding up the Benefits report released late on Monday, the international development lender put the annual global economic benefit at more than $1.8 trillion a year by 2030 if such changes were carried out to reduce carbon emissions, which are blamed for global warming.
It also said that more than 1 million lives would be saved.
“The report’s findings show clearly that the right policy choices can deliver significant benefits to lives, jobs, crops, energy and GDP,” said Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group.
The report focused on the world’s two greatest emitters of greenhouse gasses – the United States and China – and development powerhouses India, Brazil and Mexico.
The World Bank suggested four projects that would create nearly 200,000 jobs: India could build another 1,000 km of new bus rapid transit lanes; Brazil could send all solid waste to landfills for collection of methane and biogas; Mexico could equip 90 per cent of its pig and dairy farms with biogas collection and solar energy; and China could deploy 70 million clean cook stoves.
In general, the World Bank called for polices to stimulate clean transport, improve industrial energy efficiency and build more energy-efficient buildings and appliances.
A year ago, in its Turn Down the Heat report, the World Bank warned that climate change will hit the world’s poorest people the hardest.
The United Nations and environmental activists are working to reduce greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide that are blamed for causing global warming. Efforts have stalled, and the next round of global talks is slated for Paris in 2015.
Climate scientists say that the world faces temperature increases of 4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of century if no preventative action is taken.
The only way to avoid drastic rises in sea level and lethal drought is to keep that increase to 2 degrees or less, they say.