IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: It’s Now or Never to Take Up Climate Action For A Livable Future!

“The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss the brief, rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.”

These are the profound words issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), at the launch of the Sixth Assessment Report titled Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. The report was developed by the Working Group of IPCC, which includes 270 authors from 67 countries, 43 per cent of which are developing and 57 per cent are developed economies. It is a moment of pride for Pakistan that one of the Drafting Contributing Authors was Ali Jamshed, belonging to Germany/Pakistan, giving the country an important representation on this key initiative. The driving ambition for IPCC’s working group is that growing scientific knowledge gives humans a better understanding of challenges, which in turn helps in advancing forward with the ambition to overcome the global climate crisis.

Planet Earth, inherited from our ancestors and loaned to our children, is facing the perils of climate change, which is a global phenomenon of facing long-term changes in Earth’s natural environment. The most notable of these trends include rising global temperatures, glacial melting rates and sea levels, and a rise in the frequency of disruptions in Earth’s climate and weather systems. These changes are leading to a multitude of impacts, such as prolonged summers/winters, increased intensity of heat, ocean acidification, and greater incidences of climate-induced natural disasters like droughts, floods, coastal hurricanes, heatwaves, and many more.

Since the industrial revolution began in the 17th century, anthropic activities scaled up exponentially, resulting in large scale emissions of greenhouse gases while also leading to a variety of unsustainable environmental and human interactions that leaves the natural ecosystem damaged and depleted. Since human societies, wildlife, ecosystems and the climate are closely dependent upon each other, these manmade disruptions in the ecosystem and climate have left both humans and biodiversity at stake.

When it comes to flora and fauna, their species across land and water bodies (both freshwater, coastal, and oceanic) are suffering from changes in their habitats. Historically, today Planet Earth has all-time high extinction rates for wildlife, with an estimated 37,000 animal and plant species at the brink of extinction, making up 28 per cent of all studied species.

For humans, climate change means that life as we know it will cease to exist, since changes will be felt in almost all human systems, be it societal, energy and infrastructure, economic, political, or behavioural systems.

The Sixth Assessment Report highlights some of the most prominently observed impacts from climate change. The effect of climate change on marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems and ecosystem services is significantly increasing with implications on water and food security, human settlements and infrastructure, health and wellbeing, economic productivity, and societal culture. Most notably, there has been a rise in the prevalence of inequality, social injustice, and poverty that can be correlated to the breakdown of ecosystem services available to humans and the disproportionate extraction and distribution of natural resources.

One way of understanding this domino effect is how in rural areas, climate change-induced incidences of floods and/or draughts has led to the loss of agricultural productivity, and this reduced farming activity leads to loss of livelihoods, incomes, culture, recreation, and food security, compelling the rural demographic to move to urban areas for a better quality living.?Since 2008, more than 20 million people are internally displaced annually by weather-related extreme events each year. Cities too are no longer safe, with the report observing that recent times have seen the most rapid rise in urban vulnerability and exposure to climate risks, especially pronounced in low and middle-income communities. The risks have economic consequences, where damage to property, infrastructure, supply chains requires large scale funding to mitigate risks, repair damaged structures, and develop new ones. Thus, climate change has caused policymakers and public sector officials to incorporate the cost of mitigation and adaptation into budgeting practices.

When it comes to farming, food, and forestry, it is perhaps one of the most critical areas of impact from climate change, where the changes are being felt across the whole supply chain, from limiting the production and quality of crops to causing malnutrition, poverty, food insecurity, inflation, and disruptions in supply-demand.

"Climate change is making our food unsafe for consumption, with higher temperatures and greater humidity supporting the outbreaks of toxigenic fungi on many food crops, and with algal blooms, vectors, and pathogens causing water-borne diseases in marine and freshwater ecosystems."

The report observed that the level of variations in Earth’s ecosystems and climate are becoming more and more extreme, surpassing the resilience capacity of many environmental systems. This means that as the intensity and frequency of unprecedented events like floods and cyclones increase, the ability of ecological and human systems to cope with these events is reducing. This means that people and ecosystems are now more vulnerable to risks from climate change because they do not have the capacity to survive, adapt, and thrive through such unprecedented changes.

Looking at the concept of vulnerability further, one realizes that not all people are equally exposed to risks and the population that is socially disadvantaged, economically deprived, and culturally mistreated such as women, children, people with disabilities, poor or low-income countries, indigenous peoples, etc., are impacted more by climate change since they do not have the resources to keep themselves safe or to respond better with a changing climate. It thus also affects their physical and mental health, where people are feeling threatened, mistreated, ignored and physically at risk. Vulnerability thus poses intersectional risks, causing social, economic, political, and cultural tensions, where some feel more marginalized than others.

"The observed mortality from climate-induced disasters such as floods, droughts, and storms is 15 times higher for countries ranked as highly vulnerable compared to less vulnerable countries in the last decade."

Looking ahead, the risks from climate change are only getting grimmer, where the report projects that ecosystems and biodiversity loss, pollution, habitat fragmentation, food insecurity, poverty and social injustice will only get exacerbated. The risks to ecosystems get accelerated with every one-tenth of a degree increase in global warming, meaning that we can only expect the frequency and severity of extreme weather events to increase with implications of an irreplaceable loss to humans and nature.

The risks for societies include added pressure on food production, uncontrolled urbanization, lack of social security, damages to infrastructure, and loss of lives and livelihoods. Out of all these, knowing that human life holds inequivalent value above all else, the estimate that 9 million climate-induced deaths can occur annually by the end of the 21st century leaves a mammoth existential crisis.

"By 2030, the current population of 122 million living in extreme poverty can rise up to 700 million, who will also be highly vulnerable to climate risks."

Moving towards adaptation, which is the process of making adjustments to survive and thrive through the projected and current climate change impacts, the Sixth Assessment Report makes a series of observations on current adaptation efforts. Although humans and natural systems are increasing their adaptative response to climate change impacts, gaps still persist in planning and implementation. Adaptation looks different for every sector, for example in agriculture, this means earlier planting, soil management, water conservation, land restoration, and changing the genetic makeup of plants and livestock to be more resilient in new environmental conditions. ?The report also recommends that adaptation planning should be systematic and follow a step-wise approach, to plan for near-term, long-term, low-regret actions scenarios separately.

Adaptation across all sectors requires climate financing, private sector and citizen engagement, mobilization of resources, proactive political leadership, and accelerated R&D.?The gap between climate financing and adaptation is so high that for example, Africa alone is receiving billions of dollars less than the adaptation expenditure against short-term impacts of climate change. Thus financial mobilization remains a key determinant for climate adaptation and one of the biggest limiting factors.

Another deficiency in climate change response is maladaptation, where inappropriate planning and response to current and foreseeable climate risks has further deteriorated the challenge. This includes unsustainable expansion of cities, unplanned infrastructure development, deforestation, costly irrigation techniques in dry areas, and more. Maladaptation poses a serious gap in our understanding of the complexity of issues and costs us time and money without achieving targets such as attaining SDGs and developing greener economies.

Ecosystem-based adaptation and conservation of biodiversity will be a key accelerator in climate adaptation efforts, because ecosystems that remain intact have higher carrying capacity against risks, provide a greater number of ecosystem services, and help in building overall resilience. Protecting the ecosystem is a blended effort that requires societal awareness and community-driven initiatives, proactive political leadership, proper planning, monitoring and evaluation for continued improvements and localized adjustments that are key for success.

Another approach is finding synergy between adaptation efforts across various ecosystems and social domains, where some adaptation options carry mutual benefits for multiple stakeholders. By viewing the challenge holistically, adaptation solutions should be assessed through a geographical, socio-economic, cultural, political, and scientific lens. In cities and urban settlements, this intersectionality of benefits of holistic adaptation methodologies can be used as a crucial delivery instrument for climate action. Cities need well-researched and evidence-based approaches, that segment and prioritize areas for adaptation, build linkages, alleviate vulnerable populations, and make communities empowered and standing at the forefront of integrated adaptation approaches. Thus, the focus is marrying the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda with country-wise National Adaptation Plans and Nationally Determined Contributions.

In coastal areas, adaptation requires providing inland space to coastal communities, building disaster response mechanisms, protection of mangroves forests, and seabed sediments. For coastal cities, a blended approach merging nature-based, socio-cultural, political, and urban planning and infrastructure solutions will ensure urban mobility, provision of secure accommodation, and protection against climate events. In agriculture and fisheries, water conservation, irrigation efficiency, agroforestry, agricultural diversification, and land protection will be important adaptation techniques. For water and food security in general, multisectoral approaches that address the human and economic dimensions of the environmental problem will be much more effective.

For managing environment and human interactions, sustainability should be the guiding principle and adaptation would include reallocation and distribution of resources, especially to climate-vulnerable populations, and would need a mix of social, political, economic, environmental, and governance interventions. This holistic approach would be critical in balancing eco vs human needs, for example when starting an afforestation program, the rights of forests and rights of indigenous peoples should be viewed as equally important to meet. To ensure that the interactions ate being managed sustainably, principles of equality, social justice, equity, gender rights, and community consent are paramount and provide the basis of participatory policymaking, planning, and implementation of any intervention geared for people, planet, and profits.

Another benefit of multisectoral adaptation efforts is that one action can improve the situation across various paradigms of human society. Taking climate adaptations in the health sector as one example, health and wellness interventions include improving the quality of drinking water and air, provision of proper sanitation, overcoming malnutrition and food shortages, providing safer shelters from weather conditions, and creating higher quality livelihoods. These thus not only would contribute to protecting human health alone but would lead to overall economic prosperity, social cohesion and satisfaction, environmental protection, and sustainable cities. Other adaptation options that build a strong nexus with UN sustainable development goals include sustainable forest management, disaster risk management, livelihood diversification, water use efficiency & water resource management, energy reliability and reliant power systems, improved cropland management and so on.

Thus, as we are advancing in the UN’s Decade of Action, there has never been an urgency as great as it is today, to take firm action on climate change. Through experimenting with innovative adaptation and mitigation pathways, creating synergies, and accelerating sustainable development efforts, humans have to act now to secure a livable future for all. Hopefully, the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, coined by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as ‘a code red for humanity’ will raise enough alarm bells to awaken the global community on the impending loom that awaits us all if we do not take up climate action now.

Author -- Adeena Tahir.

The author is a development sector research associate with a background in environmental engineering and a passion for climate advocacy. She is also a certified Climate Reality Leader and provides youth training on climate action from various private and NGO platforms in Pakistan.

This article will also be featured in the next edition of The Truth International Magazine. You can subscribe for a soft copy edition from the website or buy hard copies from selected bookstores across Pakistan.