Brown: Backing the green economy

Environmental care must be central to any economic growth strategy, the chancellor has said ahead of this week's Budget.

Addressing environment and energy ministers, Gordon Brown said that "human-made climate change" was the "most threatening" of the environmental challenges ahead.

"If our economies are to flourish, if global poverty is to be banished, and the well-being of the world's people enhanced... we must make sure we take care of the natural environment and resources on which our economic activity depends," said the chancellor.

The environmental impact of the expanding global economy could itself have serious economic consequences in the near future.

"As these costs unfold, an unstable climate could lead to instability in some societies and economies," Brown warned.

"And as economic instability increases risk and undermines investment, so climate change will come to threaten our economic development and growth."

And in a coded warning to the US and China, Brown said that individual contributions to tackling climate change would only yield results if there was "a concerted international effort".

Brown also warned that developing economies such as China must do more to reduce carbon emissions.

And he pledged assistance to African countries to assist in combating carbon pollution.

"We want to develop, through the G8 process, a package of practical measures, focused on accelerating technological development, to cut emissions," he added.