Climate change: UN report to show true scale of impacts

Image source, Owen Humphreys

A new UN report on the impacts of climate change will be the most important assessment yet of how rising temperatures are affecting every living thing.

Several years of research were summarized in the study from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The report will say that the world is close to the limits of adapting to climate change.

The worst impacts can be avoided by rapid political action.

This assessment will be the second of three major reports from the IPC and its first since the COP26 summit.

The latest research on warming is reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change every six or seven years. Their sixth assessment report is a set of three.

The basic science, the scale of impacts and the options for tackling the problem are looked at by three working groups.

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Scientists working on the report, who all volunteer for this work, review and write up thousands of papers to summarize the latest findings under the umbrella of the IPCC.

They meet with government officials to go through their findings line by line.

A 40-page summary of their findings was published on Monday.

The focus will be on regions and cities.

The report will show that tackling climate change isn't about cutting emissions and hitting net zero in the future, but about dealing with short-term threats.

The immediate takes precedence. Mark Watts is the executive director of the C40 group, a network of around 100 major cities working together.

There are no city climate programme funds in the global south at the moment. Almost none of them are about adaptation. They are all trying to get poor countries that have relatively low emissions to reduce their emissions further, not about adapting to the impacts that they are already feeling.

The study will outline some of the tipping points that are likely to be passed as the world warms.

Some of the technological solutions to climate change will be looked at in the report, but it is unlikely that they will be able to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

It will have a broader focus than just the science of climate change.

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Lagos is the most populated city in Africa with more than 24 million people, but it is also vulnerable to flooding and sea level rise. The problem of rubbish and waste in canals and rivers is making the situation worse. The city will have to deal with the changes brought about by a changing climate.

Mark Watts from C40 said that one of the things that needs to change in Lagos is to get a grip on the waste management system.

The report will talk about social justice and sustainable development more. It does talk about indigenous and traditional knowledge, not just published Western science.

This is about the impacts on people and nature, the risks they face and the limits to adaptation as well.

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There were disagreements between scientists and officials over the use of a key phrase in the text.

For years, developing countries have been trying to get the richer world to respond to the issue of loss and damage.

They define the phrase to mean the impacts of climate change that countries cannot adapt to, including severe weather such as major storms but also slow-onset events like sea level rise or desertification. Richer countries have long opposed the concept, fearing they could be held legally and financially responsible for centuries for the disruption caused by historic emissions of carbon dioxide. This issue has become a hugely divisive political issue within the global climate talks.

The scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change want to use a slightly amended version of the term "losses and damages", which they say has a different meaning.

Officials from several richer governments objected to the idea because they feared it would give support to those countries who want loss and damage to be the top priority in international negotiations.

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The report will stress the importance of political action to cut greenhouse gases and spending on helping people adapt to climate change because the worst risks can be avoided.

The co-chair Prof Hans-Otto Pörtner told the media before the approval session that this hope has to be measured against the reality of politics.

One key message has come out of previous reports - political will is the key to a sustainable future.

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