The World Bank said on Tuesday it was planning "aggressive action" to help developing nations cut emissions of soot and other air pollutants blamed for causing climate change, in a shift also meant to protect human health and aid crop growth.
Of its funding to poor nations, almost 8 percent - $18 billion from 2007-12 - goes to sectors such as energy, farming, waste and transport that have a potential to cut emissions, a bank report said.
The bank said it would shift policy to insist that such projects in future - it did not predict levels of funding - included a component to curb air pollution.
The bank would look for new ways to help, for instance, reduce pollution from public transport, curb methane emissions from rice irrigation, and improve the efficiency of high-polluting cooking stoves and brick kilns.
Soot comes from sources ranging from wood-burning cooking stoves to diesel engines. Methane comes from decomposition of plant and animal matter and from farming, for instance from the digestive tracts of cattle and sheep.
Environment ministers at the meeting in Oslo of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, set up 18 months ago in Washington as a new front in combating climate change, also outlined projects to cut air pollution in areas from forestry to gas flaring.
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