Poor need more help to adapt to warming: Wolfowitz

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - The world is pouring money into the battle to slow climate change but doing too little to help the poor adapt to it, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said on Tuesday.

With billions of dollars pouring into emissions trading and the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism to cut the greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere, the world's poorest people are being forgotten in the green goldrush.

Wolfowitz said the reason for the imbalance was that while there were trading mechanisms to deal with mitigation -- cutting emissions of climate changing gases like carbon dioxide -- there was nothing similar to help people survive its effects.

"There are a lot of people concerned about mitigation. There are not that many concerned about adaptation, and adaptation is a problem in the poorest countries who are our main concern," he told Reuters at a clean energy conference in London.

"Having said that I think the big resource management issue for both the developed countries and the developing countries is going to be in the area of mitigation ... and that part of the picture will probably dwarf the other in scale," he added.

Scientists predict that average global temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century from burning fossil fuels for power and transport, causing floods and famines and putting millions of lives at risk.

ON THE EDGE

"If you are living on the edge, climate change can push you over," said Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense under President Bush.