Rich countries bear historic responsibility for the threat of climate change.

Kevin Watkins, director of the UN's Human Development Report Office, comments on the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) currently meeting in Brussels and stresses the need for urgent action. "Wholesale reversals in human development are in prospect. … The bad news is that even if all industrial countries deliver on the cuts envisaged by the EU, the chances of keeping below the 2°C dangerous climate change threshold are slim, and more extreme weather patterns are all but inevitable. Northern governments can do nothing, and wait to deal with the consequences of climate change - the food emergencies, the refugees, the health epidemics and the conflicts - through humanitarian aid, mopping up after the event and calling it charity. Or they can act now in a spirit of global justice, and invest in poverty reduction and crisis prevention."

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