A highly significant report on global warming is due to be published in the UK tomorrow when it will be unveiled by Tony Blair. It is the first done by an economist looking into the relative costs of acting immediately or delaying. The major point have been leaked and are in today’s Observer.

The 700 page report (how many forests is that one wonders) was commissioned by the Chancellor Gordon Brown and is authored by the distinguised economist Sir Nicholas Stern. He was previously a senior official with the World Bank.

The report refutes Bush’s arguments about the cost to the US economy of implementing cuts in greenhouse gases. A new Kyoto treaty to cut emmissions even further needs to be signed next year, not after Bush has left office. Big money – around $350 billion – needs to be spent globally on measures in the short term. Failure could cost the global economy over $6.6 trillion.

Also published this weekend is a report on the effects of global warming on Africa, the continent that emits the least greenhouse gases but which is most affected by them.
I should point out that the three main parties in the UK are vying to be the greenest. While the LibDems have a long record, the Conservatives have a range of suggested policies that on the face of it are greener than those of the Labour government This report is an attempt to regain some of that ground.

The Observer has some salient points in the run-up to the mid-term elections next month-

The Stern report will advocate extending the European ‘cap and trade’ system – under which carbon emissions are capped at a certain level, with businesses which need to emit more forced to buy spare emissions quotas from low-polluting businesses around the world, encouraging industry to find cleaner and cheaper ways of operating.

He will also urge a doubling of investment in energy research and a speedier Kyoto process – meaning that negotiations with the US will have to be undertaken while George Bush is still president. International governments had hoped to deal with a more sympathetic successor after 2008.

The immediate costs are also put into context.

Stern’s forecast cost of 1 per cent of global GDP is roughly the same amount as is spent worldwide on advertising, and half what the World Bank estimates a full-blown flu pandemic would cost. Without early intervention, he estimates the cost would be 5-20 per cent of GDP, some paid by governments, some by the private sector. But he stresses that unilateral action will not be enough – if Britain shut down all its power stations tomorrow, the reduction in global emissions would be cancelled out within 13 months by rising emissions from China.

Stern will advocate new funds to help Africa and developing nations adapt, but will argue the key challenge is from emerging nations such as China and India. Emissions from China are nearly level with the US and likely to increase as the Chinese get more cars and electrical goods – up to 30 million households are likely to get digital TVs alone in the next few years. Britain will push this week for more energy-efficient consumer goods.

The Independent on Sunday (Sindie) puts the Stern review in its UK and US political context.

The Stern review will tomorrow spell out the enormous consequences for the world of failing to control climate change and will take issue directly with President Bush’s insistence – at times apparently backed by Tony Blair – that tackling it would be economically ruinous.

It will show, on the contrary, that refusing to take action would lead to the biggest worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with “catastrophic consequences” around the globe, whereas tackling it would be relatively inexpensive, and could, indeed, stimulate the world economy.

The 700-page review will call for immediate action, criticise the United States, take a swipe at the conventional economics that have dominated thinking for the past quarter of a century, suggest measures to cut pollution at home, and call for increased aid to help poor countries – such as those in Africa – cope with the effects of global warming.

It’s the effects on Africa that are discussed in the other report previewed this weekend. This is an update of a report by the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, an alliance of 22 bodies, “Africa – Up in Smoke?”. This persuaded Brown of the importance of the issue. It has dire predictions for the consequences of what is already being experienced on the continent.

“Africa is steadily warming,” it concludes. “It is becoming clear that in many places dangerous climate change is already taking place.” The six warmest years ever recorded in Africa have all been since 1987, it says, and in many parts of the continent temperatures are expected to rise twice as fast as in the world as a whole. The result will be to drive its climate ever more towards extremes. Traditionally arid areas such as the north-east and south of the continent, and the Sahel on the fringes of the Sahara in west Africa, are becoming drier – with increased droughts – while rainy areas, such as equatorial Africa, are getting wetter, with more floods.

Even worse, perhaps, the weather is becoming increasingly unpredictable, with confusing changes in the seasons, making it harder and harder for poor farmers to know when to invest their scarce time and resources into planting, tending and harvesting their crops.

The report predicts that “climate change will reduce crop yields by 10 per cent over the whole of Africa”, a catastrophic development in a hungry continent which, even now, is struggling to increase its harvests enough to feed its rapidly growing population. But even this figure, as an average, disguises much greater, more local disasters.

Tanzania, for example, expects its maize harvests to fall by a third, and its millet yield to go down by three-quarters. Meanwhile the sorghum crop, another staple, is expected to drop by as much as four-fifths in Sudan.

In all, according to other predictions, 40 per cent of Africa’s countries will suffer “major losses” in cereal production. Yet four out of every five of its people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods – and the number of the desperately poor has almost doubled, to more than 500 million, in the past 25 years.

Their solution is going to be as painful as Stern predicts and illustrates the level of action needed. The BBC reports

Between $10bn (£5.2bn) and $40bn is needed annually, the report says, but industrialised countries have given only $43m – a tenth of the amount they have pledged – while rich country fossil fuel subsidies total $73bn a year.

The agencies say that greenhouse emissions cuts of 60% – 90% will ultimately be needed – way beyond the targets set in the Kyoto agreement.

“Climate change is overwhelming the situation in Africa… unless we take genuine steps now to reduce our emissions, people in the developed world will be condemning millions to hunger, starvation and death,” said Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth.

Inaction by the USA is going to create even further foreign policy problems. It is not like those most affected by global warming are unaware what is causing the effects they are witnessing. As the Sindie points out:

Around Habiba Hassan’s home no one can remember a drought this severe. Children have been dying, and the land, in her words, is “turning to desert”. She has no doubt about the cause: “It’s global warming.” How does she know? The people of her village had learnt about it from the BBC Somali service, heard on their £2.50 radios.

The BBC World Service is funded by the British government’s Foreign Office. Cannot even trust your friends not to fund subversives can you Mr Bush!