Global leaders argued today that efforts to eradicate poverty must be linked to climate change, saying that rising temperatures will have widespread effects on everything from food supplies to education.
Panelists at two separate sessions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, among them Bill Gates, Al Gore and U2 frontman Bono, underlined the importance of the issue.
The United Nations is also making climate change a priority at Davos this year, pushing for a UN-brokered internationally binding climate treaty in Paris in 2015.
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At a debate sponsored by The Associated Press, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the next UN-led campaign to eradicate extreme poverty must make the climate a top priority.
More than one billion people live in extreme poverty by the World Bank's definition, living on less than USD 1.25 a day.
"We do need to prioritize, but I would argue if we do want to help the one billion, we need to put in climate change," Cameron said.
The AP's debate also featured Bono and officials from Nigeria, Save the Children International and Prudential Plc. It was looking ahead to the expiration of the UN's "millennium goals" to reduce poverty, hunger and child mortality and combat disease by 2015, and to envision what goals should be set for the next 15 years.
