The story so far: On February 27, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a major report that reviewed the scientific evidence on natural, ecological, social and economic spheres, concluding that climate change has already produced irreversible losses and damage to land, coastal and marine ecosystems.
This new report, which assesses the prospects for the planet if global average surface temperature exceeds 1.5°C from the pre-industrial era, warns of severe consequences to food supply, human health, biodiversity loss and integrity of the natural environment, if carbon emissions from human activity are not sharply reduced, and governments lack the political will to review their policies.
What are the key features of the report?
Using the time-frames of near-term, mid-term and long-term effects of climate change caused by average temperature exceeding 1.5°C, Working Group II proposes urgent actions that the world’s leaders must take. The WG II report titled “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” is among three specialist publications that contribute to the overall Assessment Report 6 of the IPCC due in September 2022. One report was published last year.
The scientific assessment is that between 3.3 and 3.6 billion people “live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change.” This includes people living along coastlines that are threatened by rising sea levels and extreme weather events such as cyclones and floods. Clearly, India has several populous coastal cities, including Mumbai and Chennai, which play an important role in manufacturing, exports and services, and the IPCC’s assessment points to the need for a policy review to help them adapt.
The IPCC’s conclusions are classified as having ‘very high confidence’ to ‘low confidence’ based on the strength of the evidence. One area where the data inspires ‘high confidence’ is human pressures on habitat. “Globally, and even within protected areas, unsustainable use of natural resources, habitat fragmentation, and ecosystem damage by pollutants increase ecosystem vulnerability to climate change,” it says. Taken as a whole, less than 15% of the world’s land, 21% of the freshwater and 8% of the ocean are protected.
What are the threats?
Food production as a fundamental determinant of human well-being and progress faces a climate threat. On this, the scientists contrast agricultural development contributing to food security with “unsustainable agricultural expansion, driven in part by unbalanced diets” as a stressor that increases ecosystem and human vulnerability, leading to competition for land and water.
The prognosis for a 2°C (or worse) warmer world is severe and the report says that with higher global warming level in the mid-term (from 2041-60), food security risks due to climate change “will be more severe, leading to malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies, concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central and South America and Small Islands.”
There are adaptation options, however, which should form part of inclusive policy. These include raising food output through cultivar improvements, agroforestry, community-based adaptation, farm and landscape diversification, and urban agriculture.
Applying the principles of agroecology (a holistic approach using ecological and social concepts for sustainable agriculture), ecosystem-based management in fisheries and aquaculture, and use of natural processes can improve food security, nutrition, health, livelihoods, biodiversity, sustainability and ecosystem services, the IPCC report argues.
In the current situation, between 3% and 14% of all species on earth face a very high risk of extinction at even 1.5°C, with devastating losses at higher temperatures. This too will have an impact through ecological catastrophes.
Are there any policy prescriptions?
Sounding a warning, the report says that between 2010-2020, human mortality from floods, droughts and storms was 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions, compared to regions with very low vulnerability. South Asia is a hotspot, as it has among the largest absolute numbers of people displaced by extreme weather, along with South East Asia and East Asia, followed by sub-Saharan Africa.
There are pointers for India. Heavy rainfall has increased in most of the Indian subcontinent, and Chennai, along with Chittagong, Dhaka and Mumbai, as well as the Gangetic Plain and the Delhi - Lahore corridor are seen as future migration hotspots.
Some possible remedial measures are Heat Health Action Plans that include early warning and response systems for extreme heat. Water-borne and food-borne disease threats in populous settings can be met by improving access to potable water, reducing exposure of water and sanitation systems to flooding and extreme weather events, as well as improved early warning systems.
The IPCC calls for mainstreaming of adaptation actions into institutional budget and policy planning, creating statutory processes, monitoring and evaluation frameworks and recovery measures during disasters. Moreover, introducing “behavioural incentives and economic instruments that address market failures, such as climate risk disclosure, inclusive and deliberative processes strengthen adaptation actions by public and private actors,” it says.
What options exist for climate resilient development?
In the IPCC’s assessment, the window of opportunity to keep the rise in temperature to below 1.5°C is narrowing. There already exists a consensus that under existing pledges by governments who signed the Paris Agreement, this goal is impossible, and the average temperature could rise as high as 3°C, with catastrophic consequences.
Climate Resilient Development is the answer, and it would align all pathways towards sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, institution of measures to absorb much of the stock of CO2 in the atmosphere, and raise sufficient climate finance for adaptation.
Here, the IPCC says the global trend of urbanisation offers an immediate, critical opportunity to advance climate resilient development. Coastal cities and settlements play an important role.
What cannot work, however, is energy-intensive and market-led urbanisation. Neither would weak and misaligned finance, as well as a misplaced focus on grey infrastructure, rather than ecological and social approaches. Wrong policies in areas such as housing could, in fact, lock in maladaptation, particularly affecting poor communities. Poor land use policies, siloed approaches to health, ecological and social planning also affect resilient development. The rest of the current decade is crucial in steering the world towards a low carbon pathway, the report adds.
