Global warming could cost the world up to US$7 trillion in the next decade, according to a British report.

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LONDON: Global warming will cost the world up to US$7 trillion in the next decade unless governments take drastic action soon, a major British report will warn.

Former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern was commissioned last year by Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown to lead a review into the economics of climate change. He will deliver his findings today.

But Britain's Observer newspaper on Sunday published excerpts from his 700-page report, which adds that unchecked global warming could make 200 million people refugees from drought or flood.

Publication of the report is likely to fuel debate in Britain over whether the government should introduce a tougher regime of "green taxes" to cut carbon emissions.

According to the Observer, the Stern report says unchecked climate change would cost up to US$6.98 trillion (A$9 trillion) - more than World Wars I and II and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

It also warns that the world needs to spend about one per cent of global gross domestic product - equivalent to about US$349 billion (A$454 billion) - on the issue now or face a bill up to 20 times higher than that in future, the paper says.

Stern also calls for a successor to the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gases to be signed next year, not in 2010 or 2011 as planned, because the problem is so urgent, according to the paper.

He reportedly says that failure to act quickly would trigger a global recession and calls for an international framework to tackle the issue.

The Observer says his report is the first heavyweight contribution to the debate on climate change by an economist rather than a scientist.

Environmental activist group Greenpeace said it removed any doubt about the need to tackle climate change. "If we are to avert catastrophe then there has to be a real cost to emitting carbon and that means higher taxes on flying and gas-guzzlers. We owe it to future generations," a spokesman said.

Commenting on Stern's findings, Britain's environment secretary David Miliband quoted scientists as saying that action needed to be taken within 15 years to change the way energy was produced.

"I think it is very significant that the economics revealed by Sir Nicholas Stern's report should be that the longer we wait, and certainly the longer we wait beyond the 10 to 15 year timeframe that is set by the scientists, the more costly it will be," he told Sky News television.