Tackling climate change, pollution and other environmental hazards is affordable and urgent action is needed to avoid irreversible damage, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Wednesday.

“Climate change is mankind’s most important long-term challenge,” OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria told Reuters after issuing a 520-page Environmental Outlook in Oslo.

The 30-nation OECD said possible environmental safeguards might slow world growth by just 0.03 percent a year — meaning that by 2030 the global economy would be 97 percent bigger than in 2005 instead of almost 99 percent larger with no measures.

“Solutions are available, they are achievable and they are affordable,” Gurria told a news conference. “The consequences and costs of inaction … would be much higher.”

“If we want to avoid irreversible damage to our environment … we’d better start working right away,” he said.

Global warming, losses of species of animals and plants, water scarcity, pollution and hazardous chemicals were all areas for urgent action, according to the study by the Paris-based OECD.

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