1.2 billion people at ‘high risk’ from climate change: World Bank

WASHINGTON: 1.2 billion people around the globe are at high risk from the impacts of climate change, the World Bank said on Thursday, adding that the poorest countries face the toughest challenges.

These challenges include hazards like heat waves, flooding, hurricanes and drought, the Bank announced in a new report, which found that boosting economic growth could reduce the number of people impacted by climate change.

“The sobering reality is that every country can be hit by climate change, but this challenge is gravest for the world´s poorest countries,” World Bank senior managing director Axel van Trotsenburg said in a statement.

The report´s authors estimated that raising economic output by 10 percent per capita “will reduce the number of people who are most vulnerable by about 100 million.” But they concluded that, while growth was important to building resilience to climate change it was not sufficient to tackle the challenge at hand.

“The World Bank Group is working to better prepare people for climate shocks by doubling our efforts on food and agriculture, water, ecosystems and biodiversity, infrastructure, social safety nets, poverty eradication, and livelihoods,” van Trotsenburg said.Human-caused climate change intensified all of the ten most deadly extreme weather events of the past 20 years and contributed to more than 570,000 deaths, according to a scientific study.