IPCC Report: Climate Change Threat to Human Well-Being and Planet Health Unequivocal

Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has approved the report Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, its contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report.

As usual, for seven years, more than three hundred lead authors, numerous contributing authors and hundreds of expert reviewers have worked to provide us with the best synthesis of how climate change is affecting all of us who inhabit planet Earth. The messages, although anticipated, could not be more devastating and, no, it is not alarmism, it is what we know at the moment.

In 2007, Working Group I (responsible for the physical basis of climate) already concluded in its Fourth Report that “the warming of the climate system is unequivocal”, which was subsequently ratified in the Fifth Report, in 2013.

Now, the conclusions of Group II of this round arrive for the first time to use that same terminology for natural and human systems:

We have gone from finding important changes related to climate change in the Fourth Report, to widespread impacts in the Fifth, to say now, in the Sixth, that the impacts on the health of the planet and the well-being of all are already unequivocal. And this has happened with a warming of just 1.1 °C.

Why does the alarm level of messages increase?

The reasons that lead the IPCC to increase the alarm level of its message are multiple. The observed climate change is already causing countless disruptions to the Earth system, affecting millions of people. It is a consequence, among others, of the increase in extreme weather events.

Recent attribution techniques, i.e. attributing cause (climate change) to one effect (extreme events and their impacts) are showing that many of these are due in part to the new climate. In other words, the probability that they had occurred in the past was lower than it is now or, in some cases, it was not likely. For example, Tokyo’s heat wave in 2020 cannot be replicated by climate models if greenhouse gases are not included.

The damage that global warming is causing is, in some cases, irreversible. For example, the ice lost from land-based glaciers will not return, nor will sea levels drop. Rising sea levels are having disastrous consequences on coastal areas, where almost 40% of the human population lives. These areas are seeing them flood more frequently.

On the other hand, there have been widespread tree mortality events, fires of unknown magnitude, coral deaths on an unimaginable scale, and multiple local extinctions.

A quiet global migration of species to the poles or mountains is underway in search of the climate they have lost where they once lived. It is as if the Pied Piper of Hamelin has set in motion a plan to lead the species of the planet to cooler places.

Extreme heat events have occurred in all regions of the world that have claimed thousands of lives. Almost half of the human population experiences a lack of water, some of which is caused by climate change. This will prevent the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals of “zero hunger” and “water for all”. Climate change is already contributing to humanitarian crises in Asia, Africa and Central America.

Society, victim and executioner

Climate-related risks are due to its hazards, but non-climatic factors are involved in generating risk and disaster. Society, with its social and economic model or its ability to manage risks, among others, contributes to exposure and vulnerability, the two factors that when they interact with climate danger generate risk and its impacts.

Exposure and vulnerability are mostly social constructions, so ultimately risks end up being children of our action. Inequality, marginalization, pockets of vulnerable people in all societies, including the most egalitarian, interact with anthropogenic climate change to increase its threats to society.

This has been the case and will continue to be so in the future if we maintain a development model that exalts inequality, the excess of those who have so much, compared to those who do not have food. The risks of climate change increase as do social inequality, inequality, inequality of opportunity, segregation by race, ethnicity or gender. Children, the elderly and women, particularly girls, are more vulnerable. Climate change hits harder where society is weaker, less structured, less resilient, less human.

Multiplying impacts

Over the next two decades, we face increasing risks from a 1.5°C warming that is now inevitable. The impacts are becoming increasingly complex, due to the interaction and cascading effects of multiple extreme episodes.

Beyond the next two decades, the impacts will be several times greater than what we are already suffering, depending on the level of warming. In fact, every small increase in global temperature above 1.5°C means discernible increases in impacts. For example, if 90% of species face extinction risks for 1.5°C warming, that risk would be multiplied if we reached 3°C, which is the approximate path we are following at the moment.

Climate change will continue to undermine the food security of millions of people. With 2°C warming, this security will be compromised in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central America or small island countries, at certain risk of malnutrition. Globally, one billion people living in low-lying coastal areas may be affected by rising sea levels.

Action and adaptation

Although adaptation to climate change is underway, in most countries it has not gone beyond the preparedness phase. The gap between what needs to be done and what is being done remains desperately wide and at the current rate of implementation will only widen.

In every sector, in every region, there are effective adaptation options that can reduce or minimize damage from climate change. However, the ability to decrease it decreases with warming. In other words, the warmer we get, the fewer options are to minimize their impacts.

Measures can be put in place to reduce inputs and be less dependent on items that may become scarce. Overconsumption and diet, with its high demands on land and water for meat and dairy products, means competition for land and water, reducing the options for managing scarcity.

Robust, universal health systems with early warning systems for disease or other risks to human health is one of those “win-win” measures that will help us tackle climate change.

The IPCC also tells us that “any further delay in concerted global action will miss the brief window that closes quickly to ensure a livable future.” In other words, there is time to act and avoid major impacts, but it is short, very short. We must increase the ambition to stop warming and make greenhouse gas emissions start to fall now, not to decrease their rate of increase, but to decrease effectively.

Having a healthy planet is critical to being able to enter into sustainable development trends that are resilient to our excesses. It’s time to think that without a healthy planet we will all suffer. We have to free a part of the planet from the extreme pressure to which we subject it.

So far, we protect less than 15% of the land, 18% of inland aquatic systems and 8% of the ocean. Improving our planetary resilience requires protecting no less than 30-50% of terrestrial, freshwater and ocean systems. We must reverse a trend that leads us to disaster, and we must do so in order to live better.

Source: El Diario AR