From: Reuters
Published April 9, 2008 07:54 AM

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/34347 

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The world is on course to halve extreme poverty by 2015, but Africa will fall far short of the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.

A new report by the global institutions also warned that urgent action was needed to tackle climatechange, which threatens to exact a hefty toll on particularly poor countries and reverse progress in fighting poverty.

The 2008 Global Monitoring Report, released ahead of the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington this weekend, said strong economicgrowth in much of the developing world had contributed to the decline in global poverty.

 ...

Turning to the environment, the report said poverty reduction may not be sustainable if forests are lost, fisheries depleted, water or air is polluted and soil degraded.

It said water scarcity and deforestation were already a factor in the developing world and are valuable assets and sourcesofincome to poor countries.

"The depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation undermines the long-term growth prospects of many developing countries," the report said.

It called for coordinated global action to avert further climate change, adding that extreme climatic events such as droughts and floods in the world's poorest countries may also exacerbate conflicts and cross-country migration.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Tom Hals)