UN report: The world is unprepared for the impacts of climate change
The world is unprepared for the impacts of climate change, a new UN report has warned, as finance for adaptation “woefully” trails finance for mitigating its worst effects.
Weather and climate extremes have already begun causing economic and societal impacts through supply-chains, markets, and flows of natural resources, the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Businesses and governments are swallowing heightened costs due to more transboundary risks across water, energy and food sectors – whether it be the climate pushing fish stocks up north which calls for greater cooperation between countries or weather conditions scuppering supply chains.
While changes in water availability, due to melting ice caps and flooding, can bruise productivity for infrastructure such as hydropower plants.
“When we look at the evidence, it’s increasingly clear that the pace of adaptation across the globe is not enough to keep up with the pace of climate change,” said Mark Howden, vice chair of the IPCC’s Working Group II.
Over the next 20 years, even if the world limits warming to 1.5°C – the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement – there will be “unavoidable increase in multiple climate hazards” including risks to ecosystems and humans like extreme weather, the IPCC said in the report.
However, limiting warming to 1.5°C will “substantially reduce projected losses and damages” related to climate change, but it unfortunately “cannot eliminate them all”, the report added.
From 2040 onwards, the UN’s climate body expects Earth’s warming climate to weigh on food production, as the frequency and intensity of droughts, floods and heatwaves climb.
“Climate change impacts and risks are becoming increasingly complex and more difficult to manage. Multiple climate hazards will occur simultaneously, and multiple climatic and non-climatic risks will interact, resulting in compounding overall risk and risks cascading across sectors and regions,” said the IPCC.
In Europe, flooding is a key concern, alongside heat extremes, marine ecosystem damage, water scarcity, and losses of crops.
A UK government spokesperson said: “Today’s stark report from the IPCC is a reminder to the world about how climate change is affecting our planet, underlining that we need to go further and faster to adapt and generate more clean power to reduce countries’ exposure to expensive global gas prices, embracing the commitments of the Glasgow Climate Pact.”
While the government spokesperson hailed the doubling of the UK’s international climate finance to £11.6bn, which includes £5.2bn to tackle flooding and coastal erosion in the UK, global climate leader at PwC, Emma Cox has cautioned that “finance for adaptation is woefully trailing finance for mitigation”.
“Today’s report shows that the impacts of climate change are far worse than expected and efforts around adaptation and building resilience are falling short,” she said.
“At COP26, governments committed to doubling their financial contributions for adaptation (against 2019 levels) by 2025, in an effort to secure greater parity between adaptation and mitigation. But this is still far short of the $70bn (£52.2bn) in adaptation costs countries are facing today.
“The IPCC’s latest findings warn us that we need to invest more heavily in measures to manage the impacts of climate on our homes, businesses, infrastructure, communities and livelihoods. And that every fraction of a degree of warming we fail to avoid will result in the exponential increase in costs and damage we will face.”