Climate change is the defining human development challenge of
the 21st Century. Failure to respond to that challenge will
stall and then reverse international efforts to reduce poverty.
The poorest countries and most vulnerable citizens will suffer
the earliest and most damaging setbacks, even though they have
contributed least to the problem. Looking to the future, no
country—however wealthy or powerful—will be immune to the impact
of global warming. Climate change is not just a future scenario.
Increased exposure to droughts, floods and storms is already
destroying opportunity and reinforcing inequality. Meanwhile,
there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that the world is
moving towards the point at which irreversible ecological
catastrophe becomes unavoidable. Business-as-usual climate
change points in a clear direction: unprecedented reversal in
human development in our lifetime, and acute risks for our
children and their grandchildren. In a divided but ecologically
interdependent world, it challeng