An interview with World Bank president Jim Kim (pictured above) will be live streamed on Saturday. He joins other leaders at Davos 2013 to discuss climate change. Photograph: Enrique Castro-Mendivil/Reuters

Live stream of World Bank president Jim Kim and scores of others will come together to discuss the pressing issue of climate change at World Economic Forum annual meeting

Here in Davos, Switzerland, more than 2,500 businesses, governments, NGOs and other influential global leaders are gathering for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting.

This year, there will be close to 30 significant sessions in the program on climate change, environmental resilience, food security and natural resource management – about 15% of the overall program. The renewed focus on green economic challenges at Davos is gaining much traction amid the discussions on fiscal cliffs, perhaps due to the increasing costs of weather damage and environmental stress that business and investors are experiencing.

Our recent Global Risks report identified food shortages, water crises and rising greenhouse gas emissions as three of the top global risks in terms of likelihood and impact that the world faces, alongside chronic fiscal imbalances and severe income disparity. Environment and economics seem increasingly linked in our interconnected global economy.

A warming planet

There is also increasing recognition of the worrying trend that multi-year emissions from greenhouse gasses have not lessened due to the ongoing economic crisis. Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), will be in Davos to explain UNEP estimates that about 49bn tonnes of CO2eq were emitted in 2011, roughly 20% more than the global emissions in 2000.

More disturbing still is UNEP’s assessment that under current targets the world is on course for 4°C warming. The new head of the World Bank, president Jim Kim has said that a 4°C world would be “devastating”, and so different from our current climate that it will come with high uncertainty and new risks that threaten our very ability to anticipate and plan.

On Saturday 26 January at 11.15 Europe time, an interview with president Jim Kim will be live streamed from the World Economic Forum, in which he will talk about the extreme economic risks of a 4°C world.

2012 was one of the 10th warmest years on record and the 36th consecutive year since 1976 that the yearly global temperature was above the 1960-1990 average, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); the US drought in 2012 was another record breaker, with about 45% of the continent in severe to extreme drought by November. The Midwest had the hottest, driest summer since 1936.

Insurance sector responds

In discussion with US Senators earlier in 2012, leading insurers expressed their concerns about national economic vulnerability to these trends. They estimated that average weather-related insurance industry losses in the US were about $3bn (£1.9bn) a year in the 1980s compared to about $20bn (£13bn) annually by the end of the last decade.

Top executives from many insurance industry giants like Swiss Re, Zurich Financial, Marsh & McLennan and others will also be in Davos to discuss this worrying climate damage forecast.

They will share their concerns with energy chief executives, economic and finance officials, leading climate negotiators and senior officials and experts from key economies such as China, Europe and the United States.

The world’s top cleaders

The leaders of the world’s top environmental NGOs are also in Davos to engage with business, finance and political leaders on these issues. This includes: the combined firepower of the presidents and chief executives of Environmental Defence, Greenpeace International, the Global Green Growth Institute, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, and WWF International; as well as business organisations like the World Business Council for Sustainable Development; labour organisations like the International Trade Union Confederation; and other key civil society organisations such as Oxfam, Care International, Save the Children, Red Cross and the Gates Foundation, among many others.

An important issue running through all of these discussions is the economic, social and environmental value now at risk in our global economy as a result of unavoidable climate change. Leaders of cities, business and finance increasingly seek to strengthen the resilience of their assets, operations and supply chains to rising incidences of extreme weather. They want to know what practical responses politicians and global institutions can offer them to avoid Jim’s unmanageable future of climate risk, above and beyond continuing the slow pace of international negotiations to agree a new climate framework by 2015.

Food security

Those working in the food security domain will also be in Davos to urge faster action on climate change. This year, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation tracked how the deterioration of maize crops in the US following extensive drought damage pushed prices up 20% by July 2012; and that international wheat quotations also rose by a similar amount, amid worsened production prospects in the Russian Federation and expectations of higher demand for wheat because of tight maize supplies.

José Graziano da Silva, head of the FAO, will be in Davos to highlight the issue of rising food prices and food price volatility, as yet another key risk associated with changing weather patterns.

Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, the respected UK-based thinktank will also be here to discuss his organisation’s work on resources futures. This shows that in the decade 2000-10, the price volatility of major commodities has increased by more than factor six. As recent years have shown, these kinds of price movements in food have very real economic, political and social implications all around the world.

In an era of tight government budgets, when it seems increasingly clear that additional investment will be required to “climate proof” our economies, the green business discussions at Davos this year will seek to square this seemingly impossible investment circle: how to spend more when there is less available? The era of naive green subsidies is past.

The World Economic Forum’s 2013 Green Investment Report, released on Wednesday, provides some answers. It shows that in today’s fiscally constrained times we can find smart ways to use limited public funds to leverage much more private finance into green investment.

Energy and infrastructure

At Davos, more than 50 chief executives and senior executives from clean energy and infrastructure companies will meet with the world’s most influential development financial institutions, including the heads of sovereign wealth funds, organisations like the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the Global Environment Facility, the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation and national development banks, including from Russia and Brazil. They will discuss the report’s key conclusion: that an increase of $36bn annually in current public investment for clean energy, if used much more smartly, can spur up to $570bn a year in private capital – enough investment to avoid devastating climate impacts on the global economy.

While $36bn sounds a lot, the price-tag of weather-related disasters in the US alone this year was more than $110bn (with an extra $50bn recently allocated by congress to help pay for the damage just from hurricane Sandy).

With the insurance industry forecasting these damage cost trends will get worse, not better, $36bn a year seems like a smart additional global public investment to avoid an unimaginable climate cliff.

These are the very real environment and economic issues that leaders will be asked to address in Davos this year. And these meetings can have a real impact. Last year at Davos, for example, an idea for a catalytic public-private fund for climate smart investments was discussed. This year, the IFC will announce they are well on the way to raising $0.5bn from investors for this fund, and they hope to start triggering new spending shortly – a very practical step forward in managing the now unavoidable impacts of climate change, and for investing in the new clean energy assets we need to avoid an unmanageable future world.

Dominic Waughray is senior director for environmental initiatives, World Economic Forum

The Guardian