Reuters

A top scientific academy called on June's Rio Summit to tackle population growth and voracious consumption that are placing Earth's resources under intolerable strain.

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Kampala - Climate change will cause more extreme weather in coming years, making winter days colder and summer hotter, with increased risks of floods and droughts in some regions of the world, a new UN report warned on Friday.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says there is a high likelihood that greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities, such as coal burning, are influencing weather patterns.

Poorer countries' economies will likely be battered the most by the wilder weather, as food insecurity might increase due to less stable production, while fishing capacities could decrease. Even tourism, a major source of income in developing nations, could be affected.

Small island nations will face rising sea levels, the wind speed of tropical cyclones will increase, and hot days will become more frequent and hotter, the scientists writing for the IPCC report estimated.

“The report shows that risks of climate changes are rising, and we need to manage this rising risk of disasters. So we need to be able to help the people and regions affected by them before they happen,” said Maarten van Aalst, who works with the International Red Cross and was one of the experts who contributed to the new report.

A group of investors, insurance representatives and others working on climate change stressed that the report backed up what they already knew about the risks to the global economy.

“The IPCC report is further confirmation for investors not just of the reality of climate change but of the urgent need to hedge against the growing risk of devastating climate events in many parts of the world,” said Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Asset Management.

The report, which calls on government to take “low regret” measures - or inexpensive ways to mitigate climate change - to help shield populations from changing weather patterns, is being released as 2011, considered a year with particularly extreme weather, comes to a close.

The US state of Texas and the Horn of Africa witnessed particularly difficult droughts, while Thailand suffered more than 500 deaths due to flooding.

“There are many options for decreasing risk. The best options can provide benefits across a wide range of possible levels of climate change,” said Vicente Barros, who helped the IPCC with the report. - Sapa-dpa

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