Emerging world key to climate deals: Zoellick
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - International agreements on how to avert climate change will hinge on the support of developing countries, the chief of the World Bank said on Thursday.
That will require a solution that still allows economic growth in industrializing India, China and parts of Africa, bank President Robert Zoellick said.
"You won't deal with climate change unless you get the developing countries to be a part of it," Zoellick said in a speech at Harvard University in Cambridge, outside Boston. "If the developing world says, 'We don't get energy development,' forget it, just forget it."
Zoellick, a former top trade negotiator for the United States in the current seven-year-old round of talks at the World Trade Organization noted that global accords on climate change could prove more elusive than trade agreements.
"The economics of trade have been pretty well known for an incredible number of years and you still have difficulties getting countries to work in their economic self-interest," he said.
Engaging developing countries on the topic also means helping them develop plans to handle rising seas and a warmer world, rather than just trying to avert further change, he said.
"If you talk to developing countries, their primary interest is adaptation. If you're in Bangladesh and the sea rises around 1.5 meters (5 feet), you lose 40 percent of your country," Zoellick said. "These are immediate crises for these countries today."
(Editing by Peter Cooney)
