This will result in more intense extreme weather events that pose a growing threat to nature and people in every region of the world, a new report warns.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report released on Monday that as warming levels increase, which is now likely to happen, it becomes more likely that abrupt and irreversible changes in the climate system — including those triggered by so-called climate tipping points — are reached.
For example, at sustained warming levels between 2°C and 3°C, the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets will be lost almost completely and irreversibly over multiple millennia, causing sea levels to rise by several metres.
Fast action is needed to limit any warming above 1.5˚C as the risks of climate change as well as the loss and damage it causes escalate with every increment of warming, said Dr Christopher Trisos, co-ordinating lead author of the IPCC report and the director of the Climate Risk Lab at the University of Cape Town.
“The report is very clear that losses or damages are part of our future, and we have to accelerate adapting to climate change, to limit the amount of loss and damage. But the effectiveness of adaptation is constrained as warming increases. Above 2°C, in many parts of the world, adaptation effectiveness becomes especially constrained for water and for agriculture,
Global warming above 1.5˚C will, for example, make it difficult to grow wheat in SA in existing grain regions.
Despite an urgent need for action, global policy and related implementation to cut harmful emissions and put in place adaptation measures that will increase resilience to climate change are still falling short of governments’ commitments.
The report shows that a large “implementation gap” exists between governments’ commitments to cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and what is actually being achieved.
The report found that policies and laws put in place to give effect to nationally determined contributions (NDCs) — the climate action plans that countries have committed to under the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to below 2ºC — are not sufficient and will make it difficult to limit warming to 2ºC.
Even so, the failure so far to fully implement these policies is projected to result in higher global GHG emissions in 2030 than implied by the NDCs.
“If this isn’t rectified, we’re on track for global warming of 3.2°C by 2100,” the report said.
This latest report, the “Sixth Assessment Cycle Synthesis Report”, will inform the UN’s 2023 global stocktake that will form part of the COP28 proceedings in Dubai later this year. The global stocktake is the culmination of a two-year assessment process of countries’ progress towards achieving the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.
The report’s writers conclude that it is no longer possible to meet the Paris temperature targets without negative emissions, which would entail the large-scale deployment of controversial carbon dioxide removal methods over and above a halt to any new fossil fuel projects and a huge rollout of renewable energy capacity.
Environmental groups have criticised the IPCC for “betting on carbon removal”. Friends of the Earth International, a network of environmental organisations in 73 countries, said it is alarming to see carbon dioxide removal featuring in the IPCC report.
“We can’t rely on risky, untested and downright dangerous removals technologies just because big polluters want us to stick to the status quo. A fair and fast phaseout of oil, gas and coal needs to happen in this decade, and it can, with the right political will,” said the organisation’s programme co-ordinator, Sara Shaw.
But Trisos said the IPCC report is “not suggesting using carbon capture on coal”, but rather that some amount of carbon dioxide removal is likely to be necessary to compensate for emissions in the hard-to-abate industries, such as making concrete.
In its analysis of the IPCC synthesis report, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) said it is clear that to keep 1.5°C within reach, there can be no new oil and gas development. Planned investments for new oil and gas, it said, could instead fully finance the necessary scale-up of wind and solar.
“The [IPCC] report lights a path forward, emphasising that we already have the renewable energy technology, policy tools and financial capital required. Success is down to political will — governments must implement these solutions and act to scale-up and align public financial flows with climate goals,” the IISD said.
