COMMENT: By Ralph Regenvanu and Seve Paeniu

The cycle is repeating itself. A tropical cyclone of frightening strength strikes a Pacific island nation, and leaves a horrifying trail of destruction and lost lives and livelihoods in its wake.

Earlier this month in Vanuatu it was two category 4 cyclones within 48 hours of each other.

The people affected wake up having nowhere to go and lack the basic necessities to survive.

International media publishes grim pictures of the damage to our infrastructure and people’s homes, quickly followed by an outpouring of thoughts, prayers and praise for our courage and resilience.

We then set out to rebuild our countries.

The Pacific island countries are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and Vanuatu is the most vulnerable country in the world, according to a recent study. Our countries emit minuscule amounts of greenhouse gases, but bear the brunt of extreme events primarily caused by the carbon emissions of major polluters, and the world’s failure to break its addiction to fossil fuels.

The science is clear: fossil fuels are the main drivers of the climate crisis and need to be phased out rapidly, as the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report once again confirms. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has shown that ending the expansion of all fossil fuel production is an urgent first step towards limiting warming to 1.5C.

Driven by greed
The climate crisis is driven by the greed of an exploitative industry and its enablers. It is unacceptable that countries and companies are still planning to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels that the world can withstand by 2030 if we are to limit warming to 1.5C, a limit Pacific countries fought hard to secure in the Paris agreement.

As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly declared, fossil fuels are a dead end. Governments must pursue a rapid and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels.

Countries cannot continue to justify new fossil fuel projects on the grounds of development, or the energy crisis. It is our reliance on fossil fuels that has left our energy infrastructure vulnerable to conflict and devastating climate impacts, left billions of people without energy access, and left investment in more flexible and resilient clean energy systems lagging behind what is needed.

Transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy is crucial to mitigating the impacts of climate change and ensuring a sustainable future for Pacific island countries and the world.

This requires ambitious collective effort from governments, businesses and individuals around the globe to transition towards renewable energy systems that centre the needs of communities and avoid replicating the harms of fossil fuel systems, while supporting those most affected by the transition.

Transitioning to clean energy and battling climate change is also a human rights and justice issue. This is why our countries will soon be asking the UN General Assembly to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the obligations of states under international law to protect the environment and the climate.

We urge all countries to support us in that endeavour.

Planning our transition
We acknowledge that Pacific countries are still reliant on fossil fuels for our daily lives and our economy. This is why we are planning our own just transition.

Last week, Pacific ministers and international partners met in cyclone-stricken Vanuatu to chart our collective way forward. We have affirmed a new commitment to work tirelessly to create a fossil fuel free Pacific, recognising that phasing out fossil fuels is not only in our best interest to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe — it is also an opportunity to promote economic development and innovation that we must seize.

By investing in renewable energy sources, we can build resilient, sustainable economies that benefit our people and the planet; and momentum for this shift is already building.

Last year at Cop27 in Egypt, more than 80 countries supported the phasing out of all fossil fuels. We must drive this new ambition around the world. Pacific nations will continue to spearhead global efforts to achieve an unqualified, equitable end to the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.

We will raise our collective voices at Cop28 and through leading initiatives such as the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

We know what needs to be done to keep 1.5C alive, and are aware of the small and shrinking window which we have left to achieve it. We are doing our part and urge the rest of the world to do theirs.

Ralph Regenvanu is Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change, Adaptation, Meteorology and Geohazards, Energy, Environment and Disaster Risk Management. Seve Paeniu is the Minister of Finance for Tuvalu. This article was first published by The Guardian and has been republished with the permission of the authors.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

There is “is much to win by trying” to take action on climate change — that is a key finding in a major new international climate report the UN chief is calling a “survival guide for humanity”.

It is something of a mic drop moment for the army of scientists who wrote it — the culmination of seven years’ work and three previous lengthy reports.

Thousands of scientific studies and nearly 8000 pages of findings have been boiled down in the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released overnight.

In a nutshell, it said huge changes were needed to stave off the worst climate predictions but it was not too late.

“This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action & shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.” – #IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee on the release of #IPCC’s Synthesis Report.

Read here 👉 https://t.co/zAMzd12lR7 pic.twitter.com/YcCqIHxuLJ

— IPCC (@IPCC_CH) March 20, 2023

Pacific Climate Warriors Te Whanganui-a-Tara coordinator Kalo Afeaki agrees there is no time for despair.

“My family live in Tonga, my father has an export business, my brother works with [him], his family depends on that livelihood,” he said.

“We do not have the luxury of being able to turn our backs on the climate crisis because we are living with it daily.”

The IPCC authors were optimistic significant change can happen fast — pointing to the massive falls in the price of energy from the sun and wind.

New Zealand has seen a big increase in the number of renewable energy projects in the works.

University of Otago senior lecturer Dr Daniel Kingston said the world had the tools it needed to reduce emission.

“We can still do something about this problem, and every small change that we make makes a difference and decreases the likelihood of major, abrupt, irreversible changes in the climate system.”

Those impacts need to be avoided at all costs — there are tipping points after which comes staggering sea level rise, storms and heat waves that could imperil swathes of humanity.

No country too small
Aotearoa New Zealand has an important role to play. It is one of the largest emitters per capita in the OECD, and its emissions, combined with the other smaller countries, adds up to about two-thirds of the world’s total.

New Zealand’s gross emission peaked in 2005 and have essentially plateaued, while other countries, including the UK and US, have actually made reductions.

Dr Kingston said Aotearoa finally had comprehensive emissions reduction plans on the books.

“Now’s the time to be doubling-down on our climate change policies, not pressing pause or scaling them back in any way.”

Action would never be cheaper than it was now, and not making enough cuts would be far more expensive in the long run.

Humans at fault
Meanwhile, the reports showed human activities had unequivocally caused global surface temperatures to rise: No ifs, no buts.

Massey University emeritus professor of sustainable energy and climate mitigation Ralph Sims said emissions needed to be slashed in the cities and the countryside alike.

Without a doubt farmers needed to cut methane emissions, but people also needed to eat less meat, he said.

Professor Sims said cities had a huge role to play.

“Design the cities around… public transport. [Putting] it onto the cities to plan for a more viable future means that local people can get involved locally.”

Afeaki said some Pacific nations would not survive unless the world got real about cutting emissions.

“When people are feeling disheartened they really need to understand the humans on the other side of this crisis,” he said.

“It is easy to be deterred by numbers, by the science, which isn’t always positive, but you have to also remember that this is happening to someone.”

Afeaki said Pacific communities’ experience living with climate change meant they should be given lead roles in coming up with solutions.

The IPCC scientists have now done their part, there likely will not be another report like this until the end of the decade. It is now time for the government, and for everybody, to act.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

This decade is the critical moment for making deep, rapid cuts to emissions, and acting to protect people from dangerous climate impacts we can no longer avoid, according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The synthesis report is the culmination of seven years of global and in-depth assessments of various aspects of climate change.

It reiterates that the world is now about 1.1℃ warmer than during pre-industrial times. This already results in more frequent and more intense extreme weather, causing complex disruption and suffering for communities worldwide.

Many are woefully unprepared.

Key takeaway from #IPCC 2023 Synthesis Report for every nation, business, investor & individual who contributes to #climate change: we must move from climate procrastination to climate activation. And we must do it today.https://t.co/wqPf6CveMB

— Inger Andersen (@andersen_inger) March 20, 2023

The report stresses our current pace and scale of action are insufficient to reduce rising global temperatures and secure a liveable future for all. But it also highlights that we already have many feasible and effective options to cut emissions and better protect communities if we act now.

Many countries have already achieved and maintained significant emissions reductions for more than ten years. Overall, however, global emissions are up by 12 percent on 2010 and 54 percent higher than in 1990.

The largest rise comes from carbon dioxide (from the burning of fossil fuels and industrial processes), followed by methane.

The world is expected to cross the 1.5℃ temperature threshold during the 2030s (at the current level of action). Already, the effects of climate change are not linear and every increment of warming will bring rapidly escalating hazards, exacerbating more intense heatwaves and floods, ocean warming and coastal inundation.

These complex events are particularly severe for children, the elderly, Indigenous and local communities, and disabled people.

But in agreeing to this report, governments have now recognised that human rights and questions of equity, loss and damage are central to effective climate action.

New @IPCC_CH Synthesis Report released
One of the most impressive figures relates to the fairness across generations. The generation of my kids born in 2010s will face substantially more heatwaves, heavy rainfall and droughts during an average lifetime than their grandparents. pic.twitter.com/hWivpq74iO

— Erich Fischer (@erichfischer) March 20, 2023

This report also breaks emissions down to households — 10 percent of the highest-emitting households contribute 40-45 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, while 50 percent of the lowest-emitting households (including small islands communities), contribute less than 15 percent of overall greenhouse gases.

Climate-resilient development
The report points to solutions for climate-resilient development, a process which integrates actions to reduce or avoid emissions with those to protect people to advance sustainability. Examples include health improvements that come from broadening access to clean energy and contribute to better air quality.

But the choices we make need to be locally relevant and socially acceptable. And they have to be made urgently, because our options for resilient action are progressively reduced with every increment of warming above 1.5℃.

This report is also significant for recognising the importance of Indigenous knowledge and local community insights to help advance ambitious climate planning and effective climate leadership.

Cities can make a big difference
Cities are key drivers of emissions. They generate around 70 percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally, and this is rising largely through transport systems relying on fossil fuels, building materials and household consumption.

But this also means urban spaces are where we can really exercise climate leadership. Decisions made at the level of local councils are going to be significant globally in terms of bringing national and global emissions down and protecting people.

Cities are sites for solutions where we can decarbonise transport and increase green spaces. While tackling climate risks can feel overwhelming, acting at the city level is a way communities can have more control over reducing emissions and where local action can really make a difference to our quality of life.

We know there is much more money flowing into mitigation than adaptation. But we have to do both now, and move beyond adaptation focused on physical protection (such as sea walls).

We also need to be thinking really carefully about green infrastructure (trees and parks), low-carbon transport and social protection for communities, which includes income replacement, better healthcare, education and housing.

This report was particularly difficult to negotiate because we now live in a changed reality. More and more countries are experiencing very significant losses and damages. As countries face increasingly extreme weather events, the stakes are higher.

Governments everywhere, in my view as a political scientist, are now facing hard choices about how to protect their own national interests while also making significant efforts to tackle our global climate crisis.

In negotiations, larger countries can dominate debate and it can take a long time to get to agreement. This puts enormous pressure on smaller nations, including Pacific delegations with fewer people and diplomatic resources.

This is yet another reason to ensure action is inclusive, fair and equitable.

After working beyond the scheduled conclusion of #IPCC58, exhausted policymakers and authors celebrated the adoption of final outputs of the sixth assessment cycle: the Synthesis of the Sixth Assessment Report and its Summary for Policymakers #AR6

Read ➡️ https://t.co/Qf2U4EXPgJ pic.twitter.com/mQa4R8eu0i

— Earth Negotiations Bulletin (@IISD_ENB) March 20, 2023

For authors of the IPCC core writing team, the past 18 months have been intense. We all felt significant responsibility to accurately summarise years of work, completed by hundreds of our global scientific colleagues, who contributed to six reports in this assessment cycle: on physical science, adaptation and vulnerability, mitigation, and special reports on land, global warming of 1.5℃, and ocean and cryosphere.

These reports show the choices we make in this decade will impact current and future generations, and the planet, now and for thousands of years.

• Fear & Wonder is a new climate podcast, brought to you by The Conversation. It will take you inside the IPCC’s era-defining climate report via the hearts and minds of the scientists who wrote it. The first episode drops on March 23. Learn more here, or subscribe on your favourite podcast app via the icons above.

Dr Bronwyn Hayward, Professor of Politics, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Deeper and and more rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to limit the worst effects of global warming, a climate scientist has warned.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report that global emissions of CO2 would need to peak within three years to stave off the worst impacts.

Without shrinking energy demand, reducing emissions rapidly by the end of this decade to keep warming below 1.5C will be almost impossible, the key UN body’s report said.

Even if all the policies to cut carbon that governments had put in place by the end of 2020 were fully implemented, the world will still warm by 3.2C this century.

At this point, only severe emissions cuts in this decade across all sectors, from agriculture and transport to energy and buildings, can turn things around, the report said.

IPCC vice-chair Dr Andy Reisinger told RNZ Morning Report the world was “pretty much out of time” to limit warming to 1.5C as agreed in Paris in 2015 and subsequently.

“What our report shows is that the emissions over the last decade were at the highest level ever in human history.

“But on the positive side, that level of emissions growth has slowed and globally we’ve seen a revolution in prices for some renewable energy technologies.” That had led to a rapid uptake of solar and wind energy technologies, he said.

“Also policies have grown. About half of global greenhouse gas emissions that we looked at in our report are now covered by some sort of laws that address climate change.”

The report said the world would need “carbon dioxide removal” (CDR) technologies – ranging from planting trees that soak up carbon to grow, to costly and energy-intensive technologies to suck carbon dioxide directly from the air.

Governments had historically seen these technologies as a “cop out” but they were needed alongside reducing emissions,” Reisinger said.

“The time has now run out. If we don’t achieve deep and rapid reductions during this decade, much more so than we’re currently planning to collectively, then limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is out of reach.

“And the world collectively has the tools to reduce emissions by about a half by 2030.”

NZ has ‘squandered 30 years’, says Shaw
Climate Change Minister James Shaw says Aotearoa New Zealand has the political will to tackle climate change but it would have been a lot easier if it had begun decades ago.

“We are one of the highest emitting countries in the world on a per-capita basis and what that means is we’re now in a situation where having essentially fluffed around for three decades the cuts that we need to make over are now far steeper than they would have been.”

“Our country has squandered the past 30 years,” Shaw told Morning Report.

He said the Emissions Reduction Plan to be published next month would set out how the country would reduce emissions across every sector of the economy.

“I think what’s different about the plan that we’re putting out in May is that it’s a statutory instrument”, he said, and was required under the Zero Carbon Act. It would have targets to reduce emissions to the year 2025, 2030 and 2035.

Shaw said measures like the clean car discount scheme were working.

New Zealand’s agricultural emissions had not reduced, he said. This was the year when final decisions would be made on whether agriculture was brought into the Emissions Trading Scheme, and the whole sector was involved in the process.

There were farms up and down the country doing a terrific job on emissions but like every sector there was a “noisy group” which was dragging the chain.

“I think the charge that Groundswell are laying that we are not listening to farmers is ‘total bollocks’, he said.

Shaw noted the IPCC report said 83 percent of net growth in greenhouse gases since 2010 had occurred in Asia and the Pacific — and that New Zealand, Australia and Japan, as a group, had some of the highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions per capita in 2019.

Cut consumer demand
While past IPCC reports on mitigating carbon emissions tended to focus on the promise of sustainable fuel alternatives, the new report highlights a need to cut consumer demand.

Massey University emeritus professor Ralph Sims, a review editor of the IPCC report, said one of the overarching messages is that people needed to change behaviours.

Despite New Zealanders having an attitude that our impact was small, in fact the country had some of the highest carbon emissions per capita, he said.

“We need people to look at their lifestyles, look at their carbon footprints and consider how they may reduce them.”

One of the easiest for the individual was to avoid food waste, he said.

Sims was involved in the transport chapter and said it was a key area for New Zealand.

“It’s the highest growing sector, and makes up for 20 percent of the country’s emissions.”

Faster electric vehicles change
He did not believe the country was transitioning fast enough to electric vehicles, and government assistance needed to be ramped up.

Electric vehicle prices would also reduce over time and a second hand market would make them more affordable, he said.

Sims said New Zealand needed to “get out of coal” and some companies were already reducing their coal demand.

Though New Zealand’s coal industry was small, exploration was still on the table and just last year the Southland District Council granted exploration at Ohai, he said.

Methane emissions need to reduce by a third by 2030, which Sims said is “a major challenge, and highly unlikely” to be achieved in New Zealand.

Victoria University of Wellington professor of physical geography James Renwick said curbing greenhouse gas emissions was still possible, with immediate action.

“The advice from the Climate Change Commission does show that we can peak emissions in the next few years and reduce and get down to zero carbon dioxide hopefully well in advance of 2050,” he said.

“It’s impossible to overstate the dangerous threat we face from climate change and yet politicians and policy makers and businesses still don’t act when everything’s at stake. I haven’t really seen the political will yet but we really need to see action.”

Technologies available at present to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere were not able to operate at the scale needed to make a difference to the climate system, he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The IPCC Working Group II report on climate impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability says man-made climate change is causing unprecedented damage to the natural environment and the livelihoods of billions of people.

It also says global warming is set to rise beyond 1.5 deg C by 2040 unless the world commits to drastically reduce its carbon emissions from the use of fossil fuels.

For nations on the frontlines in the Pacific the consequences will be disastrous with an increase in climate hazards such as sea-level rise, more frequent and severe extreme weather events including flooding, and droughts.

350 Pacific Climate Warriors council of elders member Brianna Fruean says the findings in the report are not new for the region.

Fruean is a prominent youth voice in international climate advocacy and spoke to RNZ Pacific’s regional correspondent Kelvin Anthony about what the report means for Pacific people.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As the New Zealand government prepares to deal with a looming omicron outbreak, this will not be the only major issue it will have to tackle this year.

The year 2022 will be important for environmental and climate action.

Several key developments are expected throughout the year, both in New Zealand and internationally, focusing on climate change and biodiversity — and how these crises overlap with the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic.

In February and early April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will publish the next two parts of its Sixth Assessment (AR6).

These reports will provide the basis for global negotiations at the next climate summit scheduled to be held in Egypt in November.

The February report will focus on impacts and adaptation and the April report on mitigation of climate change. Together, they will assess the global and regional impacts of climate change on natural ecosystems and on human societies, as well as opportunities to cut emissions.

They will identify points of particular vulnerability, consider the practicalities of technological innovations and weigh the costs and trade-offs of low-carbon opportunities. Both reports will present a definitive statement of where impacts of climate change are being felt and what governments and other decision makers can do about it.

Multiple crises
Climate change tends to dominate headlines about the environment. But biodiversity loss and accelerating rates of species extinction pose an equal threat to our economies, livelihoods and quality of life.

#ClimateChange – why 2022 matters

Look out for #IPCC #ClimateReports this year as the @UN outlines ten key global events in 2022 that will shape critical conversations and policies around #climatechange.https://t.co/6u8zE9ujRE

— IPCC (@IPCC_CH) January 12, 2022

A UN Global Assessment Report on biodiversity and ecosystem services predicts the loss of one million species during the coming decades. It foresees serious consequences for our food, water, health and social security.

New Zealand is not immune from this global crisis. About one third of our species are listed as threatened.

In April, the UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, China, will launch a new global biodiversity framework to guide conservation and sustainable management of ecosystems until 2030.

Expect to see intense negotiations on the current draft framework as states try to balance the need to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, without endangering economic priorities, including post-covid recovery.

New Zealand’s plan to cut emissions
In May, the government is expected to release its first emissions reduction plan (ERP), in response to the Climate Change Commission’s advice on how New Zealand can meet its domestic and international targets.

The plan will set out policies and strategies to keep the country within its emissions budget for 2022-25 and on track to meet future budgets.

Under the Climate Change Response Act 2002, the government is required to set emissions budgets for every three to four-year period between 2022 and 2050 and to publish emissions reduction plans for each.

The first plan looks likely to come at a difficult time for the economy. Businesses have already contended with covid-related lockdowns and uncertainty and may soon be challenged by staffing shortages in the wake of the omicron outbreak.

It will be tricky to balance the need for significant action to reduce emissions while keeping business and the wider community on board. Expect a wide-ranging plan with sector-specific strategies for transport, energy, industry, agriculture, waste and forestry, but little detail on agriculture.

Half a century since first environment summit
In 1972, the UN Conference on the Human Environment took place in Stockholm, Sweden. It was the first international conference to make the environment a major issue.

Fifty years on, in June this year Stockholm +50 will mark a half-century of global environmental action, and refocus world leaders’ attention on the “triple planetary crisis” of climate, biodiversity and pollution.

The aim is to accelerate progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement and the global biodiversity framework, while making sure countries’ covid-19 recovery plans don’t jeopardise these. Expect growing demand for more global recognition of a “human right to a healthy environment” to leverage more effective environmental action.

On the domestic front, the national adaptation plan (NAP) is due in August. This will set out how the government should respond to the most significant climate change risks facing Aotearoa.

These risks range from financial systems to the built environment and have already been identified in the first national climate change risk assessment. Public consultation will take place in April and May.

There’s no substitute for face-to-face diplomacy. I’m here at COP26 to make sure that we meet the moment on climate, and kick off a decade of ambition, action, and innovation to preserve our shared future. pic.twitter.com/vhuHhyMqlv

— President Biden (@POTUS) November 1, 2021

The decade of action
The UN’s annual climate summit, COP27, will take place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November. Last year, COP26 drew unparalleled public attention and generated some positive new climate pledges.

One major success was an agreement that nations revisit and strengthen their nationally determined contributions by the end of 2022. But the summit was generally criticised for failing to secure commitments from high-emitting countries to keep global temperatures from climbing beyond 1.5℃.

The overarching aim to “keep 1.5℃ alive” will be more urgent than ever. A particular concern is how effectively civil society will be able to bring pressure to bear on governments.

Protests and activities are likely to be significantly limited by the Egyptian host government.

In the build-up to COP27, expect significant pressure on big polluter states to deliver more ambitious commitments to cut emissions, but also less flamboyant and free protests in Egypt.

The UN has called 2020-2030 the “decade of action”. The chance remains to avoid runaway climate change, protect biodiversity and stabilise our ecosystems. It’s imperative that this year, the third of this decade, is one that really counts.

Dr Nathan Cooper is associate professor of law at the University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Nearly two years since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, its global socioeconomic “headwinds” have blown many countries far off course from the aims of the climate 2030 Agenda, says the Fiji prime minister.

But fierce as those winds may be, they are “a whisper” next to the intensifying crisis brought by changing climate.

Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama made these remarks in his official opening address at the Virtual SIDS Solution Forum yesterday.

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are a distinct group of 38 UN member states, including Pacific countries.

Bainimarama referred to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Saying that without drastic cuts to emissions, the prime minister noted how the report had stated “we are on track to blow past the 1.5-degree temperature threshold, confirming our worst fears that our low-lying neighbours in the Pacific, Kiribati and Tuvalu, face an existential threat over the coming decades”.

“And it means all of us must brace for storms and other climate impacts unlike anything we or our ancestors have ever endured,” Bainimarama said.

“That is why, when we go to COP26 together, our rallying cry must be to keep 1.5 alive.

Temperature threshold
“It remains the only temperature threshold that guarantees the security of all SIDS citizens, and we must leverage every ounce of our power and moral authority to fight for it.”

Bainimarama said the terrifying scale of those global challenges “give us no recourse but collective action”.

“I believe we can meet this moment with innovation — indeed, we already are. Just one week ago, Fiji launched a micro insurance scheme for climate-vulnerable communities.

“We are supporting local farmers with climate-resilient crops and funding adaption efforts through creative financial instruments.”

He said that by harnessing the hope that such innovation offered, small island states could recoup the economic losses of the pandemic and reset course towards zero hunger, clean oceans, quality education, and sustainable cities.

The states could also realise the other noble aims of the 2030 Agenda, towards more sustainable agri-food systems, and more resilient societies.

Timoci Vula is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The world is on the brink of a climate catastrophe, with just a narrow window for action to reverse global processes predicted to cause devastating effects in the Pacific and world-wide, says the leader of the 18-nation Pacific Islands Forum.

Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna said a major UN scientific report released on Monday backed what the Blue Pacific continent already knew — that the planet was in the throes of a human-induced climate crisis.

The report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described a “code red” warning for humanity.

Puna said a major concern was sea level change; the report said a rise of 2 metres by the end of this century, and a disastrous rise of 5 metres rise by 2150 could not be ruled out.

The report also found that extreme sea level events that previously occurred once in 100 years could happen every year by the end of this century.

To put this into perspective, these outcomes were predicted to result in the loss of millions of lives, homes and livelihoods across the Pacific and the world.

The IPCC said extreme heatwaves, droughts, flooding and other environmental instability were also likely to increase in frequency and severity.

Governments cannot ignore voices
Puna said governments, big business and the major emitters of the world could no longer ignore the voices of those already enduring the unfolding existential crisis.

“They can no longer choose rhetoric over action. There are simply no more excuses to be had. Our actions today will have consequences now and into the future for all of us to bear.”

The 2019 Pacific Islands Forum Kainaki Lua Declaration remained a clarion call for urgent climate action, he said.

The call urged the UN to do more to persuade industrial powers to cut their carbon emissions to reduce contributing to climate change.

However, Puna said the factors affecting climate change could be turned around if people acted now.

“The 6th IPCC Assessment Report shows us that the science is clear. We know the scale of the climate crisis we are facing. We also have the solutions to avoid the worst of climate change impacts.

“What we need now is political leadership and momentum to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Pacific’s coral reef systems and coastal fisheries are set for extinction if wealthy nations don’t drastically and immediately cut greenhouse gas emissions.

An Intergovernmetal Panel on Climate Change report released on Monday night pegs temperatures hitting as much as 3.9 degrees above industrial times, twice the 1.5 degree target.

Anything above 2 degrees is viewed as a death-knell in the Pacific.

A New Zealand climate scientist is one of the IPCC report’s lead authors and said it provides more certainty about our dire climate trajectory

“1.5 degrees is likely to be reached and possibly exceeded within the next 20 years, between 2030 and 2040 let’s say, so the length of time we’ve got left to really take action to stop from the warming at something like 1.5 degrees or certainly below 2 degrees, is shorter than we were thinking,” he said.

Dr Renwick said immediate and drastic action needed to be taken to ensure a pathway to zero emissions by 2050 and to be half way there by 2030.

He said only then will we get close to the 1.5 degree target.

A senior adviser at the regional science agency, the Pacific Community’s Coral Pasisi, said it was looking grim and the next 10 years were critical.

“All of the assessments done to date suggest that anything above 1.5 degree warming is going to be dire. And up until recently, even with the best commitments made by countries, within the next 10 years we’re likely to exceed the 2.5 degrees in warming.”

Pasisi said Pacific Community assessments on coastal fisheries and coral reef systems showed warming above 1.5 degrees cuts by 80 percent the ability of those systems to maintain good health.

She said a total collapse would be likely.

“We know that above 2 degrees, we are going to see 99 percent, up to 99 percent coral reef death rates which affect the whole ecosystem on which Pacific populations depend for their food security.”

Greenpeace Pacific’s Joseph Moeono-Kolio said the latest report indicated temperature rise is on a trajectory that could reach 3.9 degrees. He said despite ongoing warnings, emissions were getting worse and so were the prospects for the planet.

“If things don’t translate into actual implementable policies that are in line with the one-point-five target of the Paris Agreement, we’re actually headed towards warming of about 3.9 to 4 degrees which suffice to say would be absolutely catastrophic for the Pacific and the world at large,” Moeono-Kolio said.

He said the flooding in China and Europe, record temperatures across the northern hemisphere and wildfires raging out of control — was with a temperature rise at 1.1 degrees above pre-industrial times.

Moeono-Kolio said nations must commit to meaningful reductions at November’s global climate conference the COP26 in Glasgow.

“We need oil, gas and coal completely out of the electricity system by 2030 and then going net-zero by 2035 which places us at the best possible chance of reaching, of not superseding the 1.5 threshold.”

Reading the latest IPCC report due for release tomorrow and…I think I’m gonna be sick.#ClimateEmergency

— Auimatagi Joe Moeono-Kolio ? (@JoeMoeonoKolio) August 7, 2021

The Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege agrees.

She said the droughts, worsening storms and rising seas should be a clarion call to the wealthiest 20 nations that produce 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

“And of course targets alone aren’t enough. We need to see changes in the real economy, and governments making decisions that encourage markets to shift with the times. Two very obvious things that come to mind: phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and ending coal – steps that could drastically reduce emissions and enable a transition to a green economy.”

If the rhetoric is not met with political action, the world will remain on track for a temperature and sea-level rise that has not even been modelled.

For low-lying Pacific countries, it would likely mean their complete disappearance.

“There’s no time left for empty promises and world leaders need to work harder to cut emissions,” according to a Pacifc climate change activists.

Brianna Fruean from the group Pacific Climate Warriors told Morning Report the findings were alarming but not unexpected and there’s no time left for inaction.

“We are past the time of our leaders saying “oh yep, this is existing, we aim to do this in in the far future, I think we don’t have time for that and we don’t have any space for those types of empty statements anymore.”

The IPCC report said deadly heatwaves, powerful hurricanes and other weather extremes happening now, are likely to become more severe.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The climate is changing, faster than we thought – and humans have caused it. Last night, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the most comprehensive report on climate change ever – with hundreds of scientists taking part.

It says human activity is “unequivocally” driving the warming of atmosphere, ocean and land. The report projects that in the coming decades climate changes will increase in all regions.

Lead author on the paper, Associate Professor Amanda Maycock of Leeds University, told RNZ Morning Report the study gave governments a range of scenarios on what the world would look like with action and without it.

“The new scenarios that we present in the report today span a range of different possible futures, so they range all the way from making very rapid, immediate and large-scale cuts in greenhouse gas emissions all the way up to a very pessimistic scenario where we don’t make any efforts to mitigate emissions at all.

“So we provide the government with a range of possible outcomes. Now in those five scenarios that we assess in each one of them, it’s expected that the 1.5 degree temperature threshold will either be reached or exceeded in the next 20-year period,” she said.

“However, importantly, the very low emission scenario that we assess — the one where we would reach net zero emissions by the middle of this century — it reaches 1.5 degrees, it may overshoot by a very small amount, possibly about 0.1 of a degree Celsius, but later on in the century the temperature would come back down again and it would start to fall and it would stabilise below the 1.5 degree threshold.

“So based on the scenarios that we present, there is still a route for us to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, to limit temperature (rises) to 1.5 degrees Celsius (on average).

“The publication of today’s report is extremely timely ahead of the COP 26 [climate change conference in Glasgow] meeting because it really does set out in starker terms than ever before that climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today. The climate is already changing and its impacts are being experienced everywhere on on the planet already.

‘Climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today. The climate is already changing and its impacts are being experienced everywhere on on the planet already.’

— Dr Amanda Maycock

“So that serves, I think, as very good motivation for the negotiations that will happen at COP 26. We’ve seen in recent years several countries making commitments in law to reach net zero emissions by mid-century, including New Zealand, and so we will see in November when the meeting takes place, how the other countries react to what the is presented in the working group one report today.

“It’s a fact that climate change is happening and it is affecting every region of the world already today. So we’re seeing, you know, every year in different parts of the world we see record breaking heatwaves taking place.

“We see increasingly severe events that are connected to climate change. You know, high rainfall events and flooding, wildfire events, which are often associated and exacerbated by extreme heat and drought, and these are happening all around us all of the time now.

“So this was what was predicted by the IPCC over many decades, the IPCC’s been saying for a long time now that climate change is happening but the impacts will become more severe as the warming continues to increase and that is what we are now seeing today.

The New Zealand context
Climate scientist and report co-author Professor James Renwick of Victoria University told Morning Report “the so-called real time attribution science — being able to use models to look at events pretty much as they happen and work out the fingerprint of climate change — has advanced so much in the last five to 10 years now, this information is incorporated into the report.

“So yes, we know that a lot of these extreme events that have been happening lately have been made worse by the changing climate.

“We’ve had just over a degree of warming so far, and you know, we see the consequences of that. Add another half a degree or another whole degree. It’s actually hard to imagine just how bad it could get it.

“I think the message is we need to work as hard as we can to get the emissions to zero as quickly as we can.

“This report is the most definite of any of the IPCC reports. There’s no hedging around that climate change is definitely happening. Human activity is definitely the cause is driving all of the change.

“The messages in a way the same as we’ve had from the IPCC for 20 years, 30 years even and yet the action hasn’t come through at the political level – we really are at the sort of last gasp stage if we’re going to stop the warming at some kind of manageable level, we need the action now.

The best technologies for avoiding the impact of climate change were still reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by switching to renewable energy and planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide, Dr Renwick said.

“So the faster we can reduce our use of oil and coal, the better everyone is going to be and hopefully some of these new [geo-engineering] technologies will prove useful. But there’s nothing on the table right now that looks particularly promising.”

How we should respond
University of Canterbury’s Professor Bronwyn Hayward, a member of the IPCC core writing team, told Morning Report there would be “huge pressure on large and developed countries” ahead of the Glasgow climate change conference in November.

“I think the problem for New Zealand is that we are still using a climate target that was set two governments ago. It doesn’t meet the Paris Agreement,” she said.

“If the rest of the world did what we were doing, we’d be well over 3 degrees warmer. So we really just need to not wait to November to make a nice speech in Glasgow. There’s nothing stopping the government.

“They’ve had their Climate Commission report. We need the debate in Parliament. Now we need to commit to a realistic target and then we need some big action.

“The Climate Commission has said that we should be saying at least 36 percent cuts or much more, actually if we can, on the amount of emissions we were making back in 2005.

“But we also need a covid-like response. I think now we could really do with a popular public servant like Bloomfield to lead it, but we need a whole of government response where we are having regular reports where we’re bringing together what we’re doing on our emissions reduction and to protect people.

“So we need to see some big cuts [in emissions]. For example in transport and to be bold about this, like what would stop the government from actually supporting Auckland to provide all free public buses and congestion charging?

“I mean, make some big bold steps…

“At the moment we’re kind of keeping on treating climate as if it’s something about reducing climate through carbon changes, but it’s social actions as well, so investing in new jobs.

“So bring the thinking together, bring our Ministry of Social Development in with our Ministry for the Environment and really start thinking ‘what does a new lower carbon economy actually look like that works for people?’.

“There’s always a place for an Emissions Trading Scheme, but we have relied on that only for 30 years and we actually have to also, at the same time make real and concrete and rapid changes where we can … we need to be really planning, not just changing our market systems, but actually planning for concrete infrastructure and housing and city changes that are real on the ground and actually doing them now.

‘A catastrophe unfolding’
Minister for Climate Change and Green Party co-leader James Shaw said the key takeaway from the report was that the effects of climate change were happening now.

“It’s not something that’s going to be happening in the future somewhere else to somebody else. It is happening to us, and there’s a catastrophe that’s unfolding here in Aotearoa as well as to our nearest neighbours in Australia. And we can see that in that kind of wildfires and so on that they have every year and in the Pacific, where the rate of sea level rise is higher than just about anywhere else in the world,” he said.

“It just underscores the incredible urgency and the scale with which we need to act.

Despite the need to reduce emissions, agriculture – which contributes almost 50 percent of the country’s greenhouse gases – will not be included in the Emissions Trading Scheme until 2025.

Even then, it will be at a 95 percent discount – but Shaw said that was the “backup plan”.

“So what we’re doing is we’re building a farm level measurement management and pricing scheme for agriculture, and we’re actually the first country in the world to put in place a way of pricing agricultural emissions… you know, just because the pricing isn’t kicking in until the 1st of January 2025, people need to be reducing their emissions now.”

As for transport – which contributes 20 percent of Aotearoa’s greenhouse gas emissions – a shift to electric cars was important but so was mode shift, Shaw said.

“We need people to be able to access opportunities for walking, cycling, public transport and so on as well. And we know that our existing fleet of internal combustion engine vehicles is going to still be used for quite a long time because we hold on to our cars for a long time.

“That’s why we’re bring in a biofuels mandate to make sure that every litre of petrol sold has a biofuels component to it that will increase over time.

“But transport is the one area in our economy that has just been growing relentlessly for decades and we have to turn it around.”

“Our country has deferred action on climate change for the better part of 30 years. And what that means is that there is a much steeper curve that we are facing in front of us and [it is] much harder to do, given that we’ve waited so long to get started.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Australia is experiencing widespread, rapid climate change not seen for thousands of years and may warm by 4℃ or more this century, according to the highly anticipated report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The assessment, released on Monday, also warns of unprecedented increases in climate extremes such as bushfires, floods and drought. But it says deep, rapid emissions cuts could spare Australia, and the world, from the most severe warming and associated harms.

The report is the sixth produced by the IPCC since it was founded in 1988 and provides more regional information than any previous version.

This gives us a clearer picture of how climate change will play out in Australia specifically.

It confirms the effects of human-caused climate change have well and truly arrived in Australia. This includes in the region of the East Australia Current, where the ocean is warming at a rate more than four times the global average.

We are climate scientists with expertise across historical climate change, climate projections, climate impacts and the carbon budget. We have been part of the international effort to produce the IPCC report over the past three years.

The report finds even under a moderate emissions scenario, the global effects of climate change will worsen significantly over the coming years and decades.

Every fraction of a degree of global warming increases the likelihood and severity of many extremes. That means every effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions matters.

Australia is, without question, warming
Australia has warmed by about 1.4℃ since 1910. The IPCC assessment concludes the extent of warming in both Australia and globally are impossible to explain without accounting for the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities.

The report introduces the concept of Climate Impact-Drivers (CIDs): 30 climate averages, extremes and events that create climate impacts. These include heat, cold, drought and flood.

The report confirms global warming is driving a significant increase in the intensity and frequency of extremely hot temperatures in Australia, as well as a decrease in almost all cold extremes. The IPCC noted with high confidence that recent extreme heat events in Australia were made more likely or more severe due to human influence.

These events include:

The IPCC report notes very high confidence in further warming and heat extremes through the 21st century –- the extent of which depends on global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

If global average warming is limited to 1.5℃ this century, Australia would warm to between 1.4℃ to 1.8℃. If global average warming reaches 4℃ this century, Australia would warm to between 3.9℃ and 4.8℃ .

The IPCC says as the planet warms, future heatwaves in Australia – and globally – will be hotter and last longer. Conversely, cold extremes will be both less intense and frequent.

Hotter temperatures, combined with reduced rainfall, will make parts of Australia more arid. A drying climate can lead to reduced river flows, drier soils, mass tree deaths, crop damage, bushfires and drought.

The southwest of Western Australia remains a globally notable hotspot for drying attributable to human influence. The IPCC says this drying is projected to continue as emissions rise and the climate warms. In southern and eastern Australia, drying in winter and spring is also likely to continue. This phenomenon is depicted in the graphic below.

Climate extremes on the rise
Heat and drying are not the only climate extremes set to hit Australia in the coming decades. The report also notes:

• observed and projected increases in Australia’s dangerous fire weather
• a projected increase in heavy and extreme rainfall in most places in Australia, particularly in the north
• a projected increase in river flood risk almost everywhere in Australia.

Under a warmer climate, extreme rainfall in a single hour or day can become more intense or more frequent, even in areas where the average rainfall declines.

For the first time, the IPCC report provides regional projections of coastal hazards due to sea level rise, changing coastal storms and coastal erosion – changes highly relevant to beach-loving Australia.

This century, for example, sandy shorelines in places such as eastern Australia are projected to retreat by more than 100 metres, under moderate or high emissions pathways.

Hotter, more acidic oceans
The IPCC report says globally, climate change means oceans are becoming more acidic and losing oxygen. Ocean currents are becoming more variable and salinity patterns — the parts of the ocean that are saltiest and less salty — are changing.

It also means sea levels are rising and the oceans are becoming warmer. This is leading to an increase in marine heatwaves such as those which have contributed to mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in recent decades.

Notably, the region of the East Australia Current which runs south along the continent’s east coast is warming at a rate more than four times the global average.

The phenomenon is playing out in all regions with so-called “western boundary currents” – fast, narrow ocean currents found in all major ocean gyres. This pronounced warming is affecting marine ecosystems and aquaculture and is projected to continue.

Where to from here?
Like all regions of the world, Australia is already feeling the effects of a changing climate.

The IPCC confirms there is no going back from some changes in the climate system. However, the consequences can be slowed, and some effects stopped, through strong, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions.

And now is the time to start adapting to climate change at a large scale, through serious planning and on-ground action.

To find out more about how climate change will affect Australia, the latest IPCC report includes an Interactive Atlas. Use it to explore past trends and future projections for different emissions scenarios, and for the world at different levels of global warming.

Click here to read more of The Conversation’s coverage of the IPCC report

By Dr Michael Grose, climate projections scientist, CSIRO; Dr Joelle Gergis, senior lecturer in climate science, Australian National University; Dr Pep Canadell, chief research scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; and executive director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO, and Dr Roshanka Ranasinghe, professor of climate change impacts and coastal risk. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Jamie Tahana of RNZ Pacific

For 74-year-old Teaga Esekia, a chief from the Tuvalu island of Vaitupu, the ocean is a lifeblood.

“Tuvaluans, they have different types of months, not like January to December,” said the elderly but agile man, who still climbs coconut trees every day.

“They have their seasons according to fish and planting. We tell the time by fish.”

READ MORE: Thousands – young and old – demand government action on climate change

Esekia was sitting at the edge of the lagoon on Tuvalu’s main island, Funafuti, where he had travelled for a medical appointment. As he sat beneath a tree, sheltering in the breeze from the harsh afternoon sun, he told of how that ocean has changed.

“Some of the common fish, they’re very hard to find now in Tuvalu. That’s a problem we’re facing nowadays.”

His people on Vaitupu also sustained themselves by planting pulaka, a type of swamp taro, which are grown in pits.

“I can see most of the pits are now not growing because if you taste the water there, it’s salt. When we were young, these pits were growing very well. Nowadays it’s very hard,” he said.

IPCC Report
The changes seen by Esekia were starkly highlighted last week in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report, which was written by more than 100 scientists and experts – including several from New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific – is based on more than 7000 scientific studies, providing one of the most comprehensive insights into the state of the oceans today.

It concluded that the oceans are heating at such a rate that their chemistry is being altered which, in turn, is threatening seafood supplies, fuelling more extreme cyclones and floods, and posing a profound threat to millions of people who live in low-lying areas.

For the Pacific Islands, it painted a grim picture.

“We already see in the Pacific these impacts,” said Helene Jacot des Combes, a scientist at the University of the South Pacific and adaptation advisor to the Marshall Islands government, who was one of the report’s contributing authors.

“It is true that all the changes in the ocean in terms of temperature, in terms of ocean acidification, will have a very important impact on the marine ecosystems and on the distribution of fish and other marine life,” she said. “We can already see some variation.”

‘Grim picture’
Jens Krüger, the manager for oceans affairs at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, who was not involved with the IPCC report but is on the executive planning group for the UN Decade of Ocean Science, said the conclusions painted a grim picture: the effects would be most keenly felt in the Pacific.

“It really confirms that our ocean is at a breaking point. It’s getting hotter, sea levels are rising, the ocean is becoming more acidic, and of course all of this is happening as our planet heats up,” said Dr Krüger.

“For us in the Pacific, the report also highlights that all these changes, and the rate and the magnitude of the changes which are already being observed, are highest in our region.”

The oceans act as a crucial buffer against global warming, absorbing about a quarter of the carbon dioxide that’s emitted, as well as taking much of the excess heat that’s trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere. But the report says there’s so much that the oceans are becoming hotter and more acidic.

“These positive aspects of the ocean in the climate change is having a side effect in the ocean with the change in the chemistry, and that will have a lot of impact,” said Dr Jacot des Combes.

“For the Pacific, where people depend so much on the ocean, it’s very problematic.”

Ecosystems in disarray
These warming waters are throwing marine ecosystems into disarray, the IPCC said, as habitats wither. The frequency of marine heat waves – which kill fish, sea birds and coral reefs – has doubled since the 1980s, it said, while many fish populations are migrating far from their usual locations – like Vaitupu, in Tuvalu, where Esekia has noticed a decline – as they try to find cooler waters.

Already, Dr Krüger said, this was being keenly felt in the Pacific. This year alone, severe coral bleaching events have whitened reefs in French Polynesia and Guam, and fears have grown about whether they’ll recover as bleaching events become more common.

Heatwaves in the ocean are expected to become 20 to 50 times more frequent this century, depending on how much emissions increase, the report said, with vibrant underwater ecosystems like coral reefs and kelp forest all expected to suffer serious damage.

“Warm water coral reefs, for us in the Pacific, that’s our major ecosystem,” said Dr Krüger. “The report confirms that we are actually creating a world that is incompatible with our way of life.”

In the Pacific, reefs are some of the main sources of food, income and defence. Their fish and plants provide sustenance for locals, and income from fish exports and tourism. They also act as a barrier, dissipating the force of waves as they charge towards vulnerable islands and atolls, especially as sea’s rise, which is another of the report’s conclusions.

Rising seas
As ice sheets and glaciers melt, it said, ocean levels are being pushed up, making extreme flooding that was once rare become annual events.

That is already being seen in places like Kiribati and Marshall Islands, Dr Jacot des Combes said, where inundations were happening with increasing regularity.

Hotter ocean temperatures and rising sea levels also provide fuel for more destructive cyclones, which further imperil the coastal regions and low-lying states of the Pacific.

“We have seen that the number of category four and category five cyclones are increasing in the total number of annual cyclones,” said Dr Jacot des Combes.

While the report said the severity of the threats it outlined could be reduced if nations sharply cut their greenhouse gas emissions, it also pointed out that many countries would need to adapt to many changes that have now become unavoidable.

Dr Krüger said this included most Pacific countries, especially in the northwest Pacific, where sea level rise was already three to four times the global average.

Urgent priority
“We’re definitely not moving fast enough,” said Dr Krüger. “Really, the report concludes by highlighting, you know, that we have this urgency, we have to prioritise, we need to do it now.”

Esekia was sitting at the edge of Funafuti lagoon on the day of the leaders’ retreat of the Pacific Islands Forum in August, where the region’s leaders were meeting to try and thrash out a declaration on climate change.

That agreement was taken to the United Nations in New York last week, where world leaders again met to discuss climate change as a mass of youth-led climate strikes were held around the world, coinciding with the IPCC report’s release.

Most industrialised countries aren’t on track to meet their Paris Agreement targets, let alone the drastic changes called for in last week’s report.

Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine is calling for greater action.

“There is no excuse for large, wealthy and polluting nations not to act,” said Heine at a news conference.

“We are most heavily threatened and impacted and we are least equipped to tackle what are overwhelming challenges as we seek to cope or to respond.”

• This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Pip Hinman in Sydney

Long-time Australian climate campaigner David Spratt and former fossil fuel company executive Ian Dunlop have issued a bold call for unlikely partners to work together to avoid climate catastrophe.

In particular, their policy paper, Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach appears to call on the national security sector to step in and save the day.

The 10-page paper put out by the climate-focused think tank Breakthrough is a succinct warning of the dire consequences of not acting on the climate science now and spells out possible scenarios of doing little to nothing.

READ MORE: Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach

It points out that the Paris Agreement was a “political fix” and is not enough to stop runaway climate change.

It also says that the International Panel on Climate Change has been too cautious — even conservative — in its projections regarding the prospects of climate catastrophe.

The paper affirms that more than 1.5°C warming will lead to “catastrophic” outcomes for the Earth. Some scientists are saying 1.5°C warming is imminent in 10 years.

In another decade we may well see an Arctic free of summer sea ice — a circumstance that two decades ago was not expected to happen for another 100 years.

Global mobilisation
While Spratt and Dunlop’s call for some kind of global emergency mobilisation is welcome, its (admittedly) vague proposal for an alliance with the national security sector is odd.

They say that “a massive global mobilisation of resources is needed in the coming decade to build a zero-emissions industrial system and set in train the restoration of a safe climate”.

The paper also backs calls for “a drastic, economy-wide makeover … within the next decade”.

They then say: “The national security sector has unrivalled experience and capacity in such mobilisation, and can play a unique role in its development and implementation, as well as educating policy makers of the existential security risks in failing to do so”.

Their short list of recommendations urges policy makers to examine how the national security sector can play a role “in providing leadership and capacity for a near-term, society-wide, emergency mobilisation of labour and resources, of a scale unprecedented in peacetime, to build a zero-emissions industrial system and draw down carbon to protect human civilisation.”

While vague, this proposal contains a lot of assumptions about the national security sector and comes across as eco-authoritarian.

It also reveals the problematic nature of thinking up “solutions” to the climate emergency while ignoring the existing balance of forces.

Real change
Do Spratt and Dunlop really believe that the security sector would be willing to go after the 100 fossil fuel producers (including privately held and state-owned companies) responsible for 71 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions released since 1988?

Let’s not forget where the power for real change resides. As Jeff Sparrow wrote in Overland, “we might all be in this together but, politically, we are not”.

Winning a safe climate future has to include holding those most responsible for the current crisis to account.

There is no doubt about the need to chart a new direction for a safe climate. But to pull that off, society would have to mobilise on a scale capable of forcing governments to do so. To achieve this, the climate movement has to significantly expand and deepen.

The climate movement has to be looking out for all possible allies, but it has to prioritise natural allies such as the global student-led climate strike movement.

The climate movement has to devote time to winning people over to take action — and the student strikers are leading the way.

They have called for another global strike on September 20 and are asking for help. They want everyone on board. The challenge is now on us to expand the organising.

Democratic movement
If the climate movement is going to be able to grow to the point where governments find it is politically impossible to continue with business-as-usual, the movement has to be democratic, inclusive and capable of building united fronts, including with unlikely partners.

As the big struggles against wars, racism and sexism show, there are no top-down short-cuts to creating the kind of system change we need.

Those who think the urgency to act may necessitate some sort of eco-authoritarian measures — a kind of 21st century Malthusianism — will find they will lose their best and most powerful ally: the global student strike movement.

Supporting the students must be our key policy recommendation.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Only the remaking of the human world in a generation can now prevent serious, far reaching and once-avoidable climate change impacts, according to the global scientific community.

In a major report released yesterday, the UN’s climate science body found limiting warming to 1.5C, compared to 2C, would spare a vast sweep of people and life on earth from devastating impacts.

To hold warming to this limit, the scientists said unequivocally that carbon pollution must fall to “net zero” in around three decades: a huge and immediate transformation, for which governments have shown little inclination so far.

READ MORE: Global warming of 1.5C summary for policymakers

GLOBAL WARMING OF 1.5C -THE REPORT

“The next few years are probably the most important in our history,” said Debra Roberts, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) research into the impacts of warming.

-Partners-

The report from the IPCC is a compilation of existing scientific knowledge, distilled into a 33-page summary presented to governments. If and how policymakers respond to it will decide the future of vulnerable communities around the world.

“I have no doubt that historians will look back at these findings as one of the defining moments in the course of human affairs,” the lead climate negotiator for small island states Amjad Abdulla said. “I urge all civilised nations to take responsibility for it by dramatically increasing our efforts to cut the emissions responsible for the crisis.”

What happens in the next few months will impact ON the future of the Paris Agreement and the global climate

Abdulla is from the Maldives. It is estimated that half a billion people in countries like his rely on coral ecosystems for food and tourism. The difference between 1.5C and 2C is the difference between losing 70-90 percent of coral by 2100 and reefs disappearing completely, the report found.

Small island states
Small island states were part of a coalition that forced the Paris Agreement to consider both a 1.5C and 2C target. Monday’s report is a response to that dual goal. Science had not clearly defined what would happen at each mark, nor what measures would be necessary to stay at 1.5C.

As the report was finalised, the UN Secretary-General’s special representative on sustainable energy Rachel Kyte praised those governments. “They had the sense of urgency and moral clarity,” she said, adding that they knew “the lives that would hang in the balance between 2[C] and 1.5[C]”.

37 things you need to know about 1.5C global warming

At 2C, stresses on water supplies and agricultural land, as well as increased exposure to extreme heat and floods, will increase, risking poverty for hundreds of millions, the authors said.

Thousands of plant and animal species would see their liveable habitat cut by more than half. Tropical storms will dump more rain from the Philippines to the Caribbean.

“Everybody heard of what happened to Dominica last year,” Ruenna Hayes, a delegate to the IPCC from St Kitts and Nevis, told Climate Home News. “I cannot describe the level of absolute alarm that this caused not only me personally, but everybody I know.”

Around 65 people died when Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean island in September 2017, destroying much of it.

In laying out what needs to be done, the report described a transformed world that will have to be built before babies born today are middle aged. In that world 70-85 percent of electricity will be produced by renewables.

More nuclear power
There will be more nuclear power than today. Gas, burned with carbon capture technology, will still decline steeply to supply just supply 8 percent of power. Coal plants will be no more. Electric cars will dominate and 35-65 percent of all transport will be low or no-emissions.

To pay for this transformation, the world will have invested almost a trillion dollars a year, every year to 2050.

Our relationship to land will be transformed. To stabilise the climate, governments will have deployed vast programmes for sucking carbon from the air. That will include protecting forests and planting new ones.

It may also include growing fuel to be burned, captured and buried beneath the earth. Farms will be the new oil fields. Food production will be squeezed. Profoundly difficult choices will be made between feeding the world and fuelling it.

The report is clear that this world avoids risks compared to one that warms to 2C, but swerves judgement on the likelihood of bringing it into being. That will be for governments, citizens and businesses, not scientists, to decide.

During the next 12 months, two meetings will be held at which governments will be asked to confront the challenge in this report: this year’s UN climate talks in Poland and at a special summit held by UN secretary general Antonio Guterres in September 2019.

The report’s authors were non-committal about the prospects. Jim Skea, a co-chair at the IPCC, said: “Limiting warming to 1.5C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes.”

Graphic from the IPCC’s special report on 1.5C.

‘Monumental goal’
Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a former lead author of the IPCC, said: “If this report doesn’t convince each and every nation that their prosperity and security requires making transformational scientific, technological, political, social and economic changes to reach this monumental goal of staving off some of the worst climate change impacts, then I don’t know what will.”

The scientist have offered a clear prescription: the only way to avoid breaching the 1.5C limit is for humanity to cut its CO2 emissions by 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 and reach “net-zero” by around 2050.

But global emissions are currently increasing, not falling.

The EU, one of the most climate progressive of all major economies, aims for a cut of around 30 percent by 2030 compared to its own 2010 pollution and 77-94 percent by 2050. It is currently reviewing both targets and says this report will inform the decisions.

If the EU sets a carbon neutral goal for 2050 it will join a growing group of governments seemingly in line with a mid-century end to carbon – including California (2045), Sweden (2045), UK (2050 target under consideration) and New Zealand (2050).

But a fundamental tenet of climate politics is that expectations on nations are defined by their development. If the richest, most progressive economies on earth set the bar at 2045-2050, where will China, India and Latin America end up? If the EU aims for 2050, the report concludes that Africa will need to have the same goal.

Some of the tools needed are available, they just need scaling up. Renewable deployment would need to be six times faster than it is today, said Adnan Z Amin, the director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency. That was “technically feasible and economically attractive”, he added.

Innovation, social change
Other aspects of the challenge require innovation and social change.

But just when the world needs to go faster, the political headwinds in some nations are growing. Brazil, home to the world’s largest rainforest, looks increasingly likely to elect the climate sceptic Jair Bolsonaro as president.

The world’s second-largest emitter – the US – immediately distanced itself from the report, issuing a statement that said its approval of the summary “should not be understood as US endorsement of all of the findings and key messages”.

It said it still it intended to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

The summary was adopted by all governments at a closed-door meeting between officials and scientists in Incheon, South Korea that finished on Saturday. The US sought and was granted various changes to the text. Sources said the interventions mostly helped to refine the report. But they also tracked key US interests – for example, a mention of nuclear energy was included.

Sources told CHN that Saudi Arabia fought hard to amend a passage that said investment in fossil fuel extraction would need to fall by 60 percent between 2015 and 2050. The clause does not appear in the final summary.

But still, according to three sources, the country has lodged a disclaimer with the report, which will not be made public for months. One delegate said it rejected “a very long list of paragraphs in the underlying report and the [summary]”.

Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

A Nasa satellite photo showing the retreating extent of sea ice in the Arctic. The latest IPCC climate change report says unprecedented action is needed to keep global temperature rises to 1.5C. Image: IPCC

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz