Queridos amigos:
Visto la tremenda
importancia que tienen estos riesgos no sólo para el futuro cercano sino para
el presente que estamos viviendo ¿no son acaso mucho más intensas y seguidas
las tormentas, no resultan más dañinas las granizadas, no son menos tolerables
las olas de calor (como la recientemente vivida en Europa), no causan estragos
las sequías y el hambre en el mundo? Reproducimos pues íntegramente este
informe de Bridges, el principal medio de comunicación de ICTSD desde
Ginebra.
Por razones de tiempo
sólo traducimos al español las principales conclusiones:
“El informe advierte
que un aumento promedio de la temperatura de DOS GRADOS, comparado con uno de
1,5 grados Celcius, pondría en riesgo la pesca y las vidas que de ella
dependen, incrementaría el riesgo de inundaciones, reduciría el rendimiento de
las cosechas y el contenido nutricional en regiones tropicales, y expondría a
más personas a olas de calor extremas y también a la pobreza. [Yo diría: nada
que no estemos experimentando ya en nuestro frágil Planeta Tierra].
“En números, este medio
grado Celcius promedio de diferencia, expondría un 5 % (cinco por ciento) más
de la población global a: tensiones hidráulicas ligadas al clima, con 410 millones
de residentes urbanos expuestos a sequías severas en lugar de 356 millones
expuestos en 2100.
“Habría ya 10 cm de
diferencia promedio de aumento en el nivel de los mares con relación a las
metas de 2100, cuyo riesgo impactará a millones de personas, en especial
aquellas que viven en pequeños estados isleños en desarrollo [habrán visto
ustedes el primer caso extremo concreto en noticias recientes]. El medio
grado Celcius menos de diferencia salvaría los arrecifes de coral, aunque no
evitaría todo el daño ocasionado…”
Mauricio
López Dardaine
IPCC Report Demonstrates Disastrous Risks from Climate Change, Calls for Scaling Up Global Action
11 October 2018
This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) released a long-awaited report on the expected impacts and
trade-offs the international community will confront once global temperature
increases reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as compared to
two degrees. The report also highlighted the emission pathways to manage the
risks and steer away from the most damaging outcomes.
The report was made public following approval by all
195 governments at the IPCC’s 48th session, held from 1-6 October in Incheon, South
Korea.
Remaining at or under the 1.5 degree Celsius mark will
require a global reduction in net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 45 percent
from 2010 levels by 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by around 2050, the
report finds. If current practices continue, global temperature increases will
hit 1.5 degrees Celsius as soon as 2040.
“It is not impossible to limit global warming to
1.5°C, according to the new @IPCC_ch report. But it will require urgent,
unprecedented & collective #ClimateAction in all areas. There is no time to
waste,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said on Twitter this Sunday.
The report was prepared on invitation from the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the 21st Conference
of the Parties (COP21) in 2015. The decision followed the adoption of the Paris
Agreement, through which parties agreed to work to limit global temperature
increases to “well below” two degrees Celsius and seek not to surpass 1.5
degrees.
The reference to the 1.5 degree Celsius limit stems
from research and pressure from a grouping of small island developing states
(SIDS), who are already facing increasing risks from a changing climate, and
was first considered in the UNFCCC’s Cancún Agreements in 2010.
The report, which includes a summary for policymakers, shines a light on
what risks could be avoided with the 1.5 degree Celsius target relative to two
degrees, and the types of changes that would be required to get there, focused
on strengthening the global response to tackle climate change in the context of
sustainable development and poverty reduction. The report brought together over
90 lead authors from 40 countries, drawing on more than 6000 scientific
works.
The findings have the potential to drive higher
ambition efforts in international climate negotiations, underlining that
current commitments made under the Paris Agreement do not equate to global
temperature increases of below 1.5 degrees Celsius. According to a report
issued by UN Environment last month, countries’ existing commitments under
their nationally determined contributions would only yield one-third of the
necessary cuts to emissions to stay within the two degree Celsius limit, with
the agency calling the gap “alarmingly high.”
The IPPC report will feed into discussions at the
annual UN climate conference, taking place from 2-14 December in Katowice,
Poland. The UNFCCC’s Twenty-Fourth Conference of the Parties (COP24) is meant
to finalise the rulebook for the accord’s implementation in line with a
previously agreed 2018 deadline and review progress since the adoption of the
Paris Agreement in 2015. (See Bridges Weekly, 13 September 2018)
The report will also be in the spotlight at the
Talanoa Dialogue at COP24, which will inform the preparation of new or updated
nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement ahead of
the 2020 deadline, as well as the planned 2023 “global stocktake” to review how
such domestic plans are supporting efforts to limit temperature
increases.
“Science alerts us to the gravity of the situation,
but science also, and this special report in particular, helps us understand the
solutions available to us,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC 48th Session of
the IPCC, in his opening statement last week.
“I believe the report could send us a clear signal for
urgent global action to stop climate change,” said South Korean Minister of
Environment Kim Eun-kyung in her welcoming speech at last week’s opening
ceremony.
“To hand over a better future to our next generation,
it is imperative that we have a robust implementation framework for the Paris
Agreement,” she said. “I hope the IPCC and the special report will serve as a
strong platform on which the implementation framework could start to be built
for the upcoming COP24.”
Main findings
The report warns that a warming of two degrees
Celsius, compared to 1.5 degrees, would pose a higher risk to fisheries and the
livelihoods that depend on them, increase flood risk, lower crop yields and
nutritional content in tropical areas, and expose more people to extreme heat
waves and susceptible to poverty.
In numbers, the half-degree difference would add up to
a five percent higher proportion of the global population exposed to climate-related
water stress, with 410 million urban residents exposed to severe drought versus
356 million by 2100.
There would already be a 10 centimetre difference in
global sea level rise between the targets by 2100, the risks of which would
impact millions of people, particularly those in small island developing
states. The half-degree difference would also save coral reefs from being
decimated, though it would not prevent all damage.
“Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius
compared with two degrees Celsius would reduce challenging impacts on
ecosystems, human health, and well-being, making it easier to achieve the
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,” said Priyardarshi Shukla, Co-Chair of
IPCC Working Group III.
These climate-related risks will endanger certain
regions more than others, disproportionately affecting vulnerable and
disadvantaged communities, where the threats posed to food security, water
access, and extreme weather could further entrench poverty.
The report estimates that the global economic costs of
the damage of 1.5 degrees Celsius warming could reach US$54 trillion, swelling
to US$69 trillion if the world continues to warm beyond two degrees
Celsius.
In particular, the report singles out low-income
countries as the most exposed to adverse economic impacts, "projected to
experience the largest impacts on economic growth due to climate change should
global warming increase."
The report also points to the complementarity between
the pathways to staying below the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold and those to
advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), where climate action can
bring gains for health, poverty eradication, energy access, sustainable
urbanisation, and food production.
Orchestrating a global response
In order to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, the
report calls for “rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented
changes in all aspects of society,” requiring cross-sectoral transformation of
the global economy.
“The geographical and economic scales at which the
required rates of change in the energy, land, urban, infrastructure, and
industrial systems would need to take place, are larger, and have no documented
historic precedent,” according to the report.
An effective governance framework to enable a
transition to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require action across multiple levels
of government, the report says, involving raised climate public awareness and
behavioural change, regional cooperation, steps to act on “climate-related
trade barriers,” and international agreements including trade deals attuned to
the SDGs.
Other key elements highlighted by the report include
ensuring accountability of non-state actors; multi-stakeholder partnerships;
strengthened domestic institutional capabilities, particularly for developing
countries; and improved climate monitoring mechanisms.
The report weighed up policy actions including ending
fossil fuel subsidies, enabling climate finance, and supporting technological
innovation, and encouraged the linking of climate adaptation and mitigation to
large-scale trends including global trade.
The report also called for taxing carbon dioxide
emissions or implementing a cap-and-trade scheme, a practice known as carbon
pricing, estimating that an effective carbon price would range from US$135 to
US$5500 per tonne of carbon emissions in 2030. According to the World
Bank’s latest edition of its “State and Trends
of Carbon Pricing” report, there were 51 carbon pricing initiatives either in
place or forthcoming as of May 2018, some of which were at national and
regional levels and others at sub-national level.
It also encouraged shifting energy consumption.
Reliance on coal as an electricity source would have to fall from nearly 40
percent today to between one and seven percent by 2050, while renewable energy
such as wind and solar power would have to be scaled up to 67 percent from
today’s 20 percent.
Failure to reduce emissions sufficiently to meet the
target would require retroactively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,
consistent with the approach explained in the report as temporarily
“overshooting,” and then working back down to the 1.5 degrees Celsius
point.
The authors note that certain carbon capture and
storage technologies and other carbon scrubbing techniques, known as carbon
dioxide removal, or CDR, are still experimental. Many of these techniques are
also not yet commercially available at a sufficient scale.
Political climate
International
cooperation to limit the effects of global temperature increases will require
high levels of political engagement. However, experts say that political
momentum will need to improve to achieve global action.
The report
notes that technology-enabled economic growth and wealth creation has coincided
with rising inequality and exclusion, with certain “regions locked in poverty
traps that could fuel social and political tensions,” impacting the prospects
for implementing pathways to 1.5 degrees Celsius and also for sustainable
development.
“Whatever its potential long-term benefits, a
transition to a 1.5 degrees Celsius world may suffer from a lack of broad
political and public support, if it exacerbates existing short-term economic
and social tensions, including unemployment, poverty, inequality, financial
tensions, competitiveness issues, and the loss of economic value of
carbon-intensive assets,” according to the report.
Last year, US President Donald Trump, who has questioned
some aspects of climate science and promised to shore up the coal industry,
pledged to withdraw the US, the world’s second largest economy and today the
second largest GHG producer after China, from the Paris climate pact.
The first round of presidential elections in Brazil
have seen the advancement of Jair Bolsonaro, who has equally promised in the
event of his far-right party’s victory to withdraw the South American country
from the accord. Brazil is not far behind the US, ranking as the number seven
emitter globally. (For more on the Brazilian election, see related story, this
edition)
Both the US and Brazil added their voices to approving
the report on Monday. However, bridging divergent views on how to present the
scientific findings during the review process was reportedly challenging,
keeping delegates working through the night on Friday.
Nobel economics prize recognises climate work
Also on Monday, hours after the release of the IPCC
report, American economists William Nordhaus and Paul Romer were awarded the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Studies.
Nordhaus has defended carbon pricing schemes as a core
mechanism to fight climate change and developed a model to evaluate climate
change costs, which acted as the basis for the UN report. Romer’s work has
focused on the role that government policy can have in fostering technological
innovation.
“There is basically no alternative to the market
solution,” Nordhaus said Monday.
“The policies are lagging very, very far — miles,
miles, miles behind the science and what needs to be done,” Nordhaus said,
according to the New York Times. “It’s hard to be optimistic. And we’re
actually going backward in the United States with the disastrous policies of
the Trump administration.”
The Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump
administration suggested that the domestic economic harm from carbon emissions
would amount to around US$7 per tonne by the end of the decade, previously
estimated at US$50 per tonne under Obama-era models, according to the New York
Times.
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