Responding to climate change in the next 15 years is the world's "mega development project", given the need to invest trillions of dollars in infrastructure, creating jobs and economic stability, the United Nations' top climate change official said on Tuesday.

 

"It makes fundamental economic sense" for countries to push forward on tackling climate change because of the benefits it will bring in terms of food, water and energy, as well as employment," Christiana Figueres told a carbon market conference in Barcelona.

 

This, together with the speed at which businesses are acting on climate change and efforts to put a price on carbon, mean "a decarbonized world is now irreversible, irrefutable," the head of the U.N. climate change secretariat told the conference.

 

"We are going to do it, because frankly we don't have any other option," she said.

 

Decarbonization refers to shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, and improving energy efficiency, in order to cut planet-warming emissions to a net zero.

 

Rachel Kyte, the World Bank's special envoy for climate change, said to decarbonize economies, "we will need to begin with extraordinary ambition at the end of this year" in Paris where countries are due to agree a new global deal to tackle climate change.

 

Experts say the national plans countries are now compiling for that deal are unlikely to add up to the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions needed to keep global warming to an internationally agreed limit of 2 degrees Celsius.

 

 

PHOTO: Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), listens during a news conference after a week long preparatory meeting at the U.N. in Geneva February 13, 2015.

CREDIT: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse.