The dangers of climate change are increasing so rapidly that they could soon overwhelm the adaptability of both nature and humanity, creating a harrowing future in which floods, fires and famines displace millions, species disappear and the planet is irreversibly damaged, an important new scientific report has been completed.
The report released Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of experts convened by the United Nations, is the most detailed look at the threats posed by global warming. It concludes that nations are not doing nearly enough to protect cities, farms and coastlines from the dangers that climate change has already created, such as record droughts and rising seas, let alone the even greater disasters that lie ahead as climate change continues. planet is getting warmer. †
Written by 270 researchers from 67 countries, the report is “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. “Fact after fact, this report shows how people and the planet are being harassed by climate change.”
In the coming decades, as global temperatures continue to rise, hundreds of millions of people could struggle with flooding, deadly heatwaves and water scarcity due to severe drought, the report said. Mosquitoes carrying diseases such as dengue and malaria will spread to new parts of the world. Crop failures could become widespread, putting families in places like Africa and Asia at much greater risk of hunger and malnutrition. People who cannot adapt to the massive changes in the environment will inevitably suffer loss or flee their homes, causing disruption on a global scale, the authors said.
To avert the most catastrophic impacts, countries must quickly and sharply reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming the planet, the report said.
Yet the world’s poorest countries are increasingly grappling with climate shock and will likely need hundreds of billions of dollars in financial support in the coming decades to protect themselves — aid that richer countries have been slow to provide.
“This report is terrifying; there’s no other way to say it,” said Simon Stiell, the environment minister for the Caribbean country of Grenada. “We need to see more action and more climate finance provision for adaptation. The magnitude of this crisis demands nothing less.”
Global temperatures have risen by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 1800s, as humans pumped heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere by burning coal, oil and gas for energy and cutting down forests.
Many leaders, including President Biden, have vowed to limit overall global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. That’s the threshold above which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic climate impacts increases significantly.
But to achieve that goal, countries would need to virtually eliminate their fossil fuel emissions by 2050, and most are way off track. The world is currently on track to warm somewhere between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius this century, experts estimate.
If average warming exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius, even humanity’s efforts to adapt could fail, the report warns. The cost of defending coastal communities against rising seas can exceed what many countries can afford. In some regions, including parts of North America, livestock and outdoor workers may face increasing heat stress that makes farming increasingly difficult.
“After 1.5 we will not get there on many fronts,” says Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center and author of the report. “If we don’t make changes now in how we interact with physical infrastructure, but also how we organize our societies, it’s going to be bad.”
Poor countries are much more exposed to climate risks than rich countries. Between 2010 and 2020, droughts, floods and storms killed 15 times as many people in highly vulnerable countries, including those in Africa and Asia, as in the wealthiest countries, the report said.
That inequality has sparked a controversial debate: how much do the industrialized nations most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions owe to developing countries. Low-income countries want financial aid, both to defend themselves against future threats and to compensate for damage they cannot avoid. The issue will be at the heart of when governments meet for the next United Nations climate summit in Egypt in November.
In northern Kenya, where drought is ravaging crops and pastures, “people are still dying every day,” said Fatuma Hussein, program manager at Power Shift Africa, a think tank. “They are not even able to feed their animals or themselves.”
Some herders move their livestock to wetter areas, Ms Hussein said. But vulnerable countries cannot survive without the support of rich countries, she said.
In Central America, climate adaptation measures that are effective today may not be feasible for years to come, said Debora Ley, an energy specialist from Guatemala who contributed to the report. Between rising seas, droughts and mudslides exacerbated by deforestation, Dr. Ley worries that some communities in the region could face collapse. “You can live somewhere, but if you’re dealing with floods six out of 12 months a year, can you really call it habitable?” she said.
The report, which was approved by 195 governments, makes it clear that the risks to people and nature increase with every extra fraction of a degree of warming.
If global warming reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius, up to 8 percent of the world’s farmland could be unsuitable for growing food by the end of the century, the authors wrote. Coral reefs, which protect coastlines from storms, are more likely to bleach from ocean heat waves and shrink by 70 to 90 percent. The number of people around the world exposed to severe coastal flooding could increase by more than a fifth without new protection.
With a warming of 2 degrees Celsius, the amount of land burned worldwide by forest fires is expected to increase by more than a third. Between 800 million and 3 billion people worldwide could experience chronic water scarcity due to drought, including more than a third of the population in southern Europe. Crop yields and fish yields could decline in many places.
With 3 degrees of warming, the risk of extreme weather events could increase fivefold by the end of the century. Floods caused by sea level rise and heavier rainfall could cause four times as much economic damage worldwide as today. As many as 29 percent of known plant and animal species on land are at high risk of extinction.
To date, many countries have been able to partially mitigate the damage by spending billions of dollars annually on adaptation measures such as storm surge barriers, air conditioning or early warning systems for tropical cyclones.
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Over the past half century, the number of deaths worldwide from storms, floods and other extreme weather events has fallen by more than half as a result of improved early warning and disaster management systems, the World Meteorological Organization has found. Public health investments have reduced the number of people succumbing to diseases such as cholera, while rising temperatures and heavier rainfall have facilitated its spread.
But those efforts are too often “incremental,” the report said. Preparing for future threats, such as dwindling freshwater supplies or irreversible damage to the ecosystem, requires “transformative” changes that involve rethinking how people build homes, grow food, produce energy and protect nature.
Some of the most vulnerable countries on Earth have dug deep into their coffers to deal with climate threats. Ethiopia aims to spend $6 billion a year on a series of adjustment measures, representing 5.6 percent of its annual economic output, according to government information gathered by Power Shift Africa. South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, is preparing to spend $376 million a year until 2030 to tackle climate-induced flooding.
Ten years ago, rich countries pledged to provide developing countries $100 billion a year by 2020 to switch to cleaner energy sources and adapt to climate change. But they have been short of tens of billions of dollars, with only a fraction of the funds spent on adjustment.
John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy on climate change, acknowledged in an interview Monday that rich, heavily polluting countries were not doing enough.
“Every country needs to do more on mitigation and they need to do more on both adaptation and resilience, there is no doubt about that,” he said.
At the same time, many communities are still acting in ways that increase their vulnerability, the report said. For example, one of the reasons why the risk of flooding along the coasts is increasing is that millions of people are moving to low-lying areas threatened by sea level rise. And some adaptation measures have unintended consequences. For example, sea walls protect certain places, but can also divert flooding to inhabited areas elsewhere. Irrigation can help protect crops from drought, but it can also deplete groundwater supplies.
Instead, the report recommends that leaders adopt more forward-looking strategies. As oceans rise, coastal communities may move inland, discouraging additional development along fragile coasts. Improvements in basic services such as health, roads, electricity and water can help make poor and rural communities more resilient to climate shock.
“If we act now, we have many choices,” said Edward R. Carr, a professor of international development at Clark University and author of the report. “In ten years, a lot less. I don’t know in thirty years.” He added: “We will always have choices. But they will be less good choices, and they will be much harder choices to make.”
Somini Sengupta reporting contributed.
