Battling Climate Change by Promoting Environmentally Sustainable Development
Battling Climate Change by Promoting Environmentally Sustainable Development.
Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri.
Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Director-General, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).
It is now becoming increasingly apparent that the global community, over several decades, has pursued a path of development which is clearly not sustainable.
In the context of climate change, we are now getting increasing evidence, based on observations, based on data that is available, that the path of development that we have adopted is leading to consequences with changes in the climate that clearly have extremely harmful impacts and hold the potential for far more serious impacts in the future.
The IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which functions under the umbrella of the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, has been able to come up with the Fourth Assessment Report which was released last year and how we have come up with a number of assessments of various aspects of climate change that go to the heart of this issue.
The work of the IPCC is guided by the mandate provided by WMO and UNEP, and its role is essentially to assess, on a comprehensive basis, objectively and transparently, the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of climate change, its potential impacts and options for both adaptation as well as mitigation measures. The review and writing process of the IPCC is very extensive.
Every draft of the report is carefully reviewed. The first draft is reviewed by expert reviewers, and governments and experts review the second draft of the report as well a draft summary for policy makers. Finally, the summary for policy makers of every report of the IPCC is reviewed and approved word by word by all the governments that are members of the IPCC. I want to place before this august gathering the elaborate,
transparent and objective manner in which IPCC comes up with its assessment.
By way of facts, the Fourth Assessment Report involved a total of 450 lead authors who actually wrote the report. In addition, we got inputs from 800 “contributing authors”. These are specialists who provide very specific inputs on highly specialized aspects of climate change to the authors who actually write the report. There were over 2500 scientific expert reviewers involved in the process. Every single comment that is received on the basis of these reviews is carefully logged and the authors have the choice of either accepting or rejecting each of these comments but they have to record which one was accepted and which one was not. Then, we have to record exactly why a particular comment was not accepted.
Let me now turn to some of the economic and social aspects of climate change. I want to refer to the large range of estimates of costs that we have carried out on the basis of the Fourth Assessment Report. If CO2 concentration was to double, then we could get a loss of GDP ranging anywhere from 1.5 to 20 percent globally and I am sure this is something that Lord Stern of Brentford will address with much greater precision on the basis of the work that he and his team have done. We also know that the cost of carbon could increase to a level
anywhere between $10 to $350 per ton. The real social cost of carbon will rise from two to four percent per year.
Now, the variation between studies is explained by uncertainties in climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivity is defined as the increase in temperature that would take place with doubling of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.
It is also dependent on discount rates, the valuation of impacts – and some of the impacts are so difficult to value in precise economic terms that we necessarily have to come up with a range of estimates. The aggregate estimates do mask significant differences in impacts across sectors and regions.
We in the IPCC feel very satisfied that in the Fourth Assessment Report we have been able to come up with a very clear estimation of physical and biological costs and impacts related to specific temperature increases that are going to take place in the future. And we have also been able to come up with a great deal of regional detail, because the impacts of climate change are clearly not uniform across the globe. To give an indication, the rate of warming itself is not uniform across the globe. The Arctic region, for instance, is warming at twice the rate of the average for the rest of the world. That is one of the reasons why the rate of melting of ice in the Arctic region is so rapid.
There are several impacts of climate change ranging from impacts on agriculture, on human health, on ecosystems, on species, on water resources. I would like to present before you some statistics in terms of estimates on what is likely to happen in the future. Around 1.1 to 3.2 billion people will experience increased water scarcity by 2080 as a result of climate change, and that’s a very large number. Here, again, there are going to be several differences across different regions of the globe. Just to mention one single set of projections: by 2020 itself, we expect that in Africa anywhere from 75 to 250 million people will be affected by increased water stress as a result of climate change. Crop revenues are likely to fall by about 90 percent by the end of the century in several parts of Africa. Again, to give a specific projection, by 2020 there will be several countries in Africa that are likely to see a decline in agricultural yields by up to 50 percent as a result of climate change. There is now growing evidence, based on research that is being carried out, that some crops are extremely sensitive to temperature increases, but in addition, agriculture will also be affected by increasing frequency as well as intensity of floods, droughts, heat waves, and other such factors. We also know that 22-30 per cent of the species that we have assessed in the IPCC could be at risk of extinction if increases in warming exceed 1.5 to 2.5°C. I would term this as an abrupt and irreversible change.
Just as if the Greenland or the Western Antarctic ice sheets were to collapse – and these are huge quantities of ice sitting on large areas of land several kilometers high – if any part of those were to collapse we could get sea level rise of several meters. That is clearly an abrupt and irreversible change.
Climate change, as we forecast, as we project into the future, does hold a potential for some of these abrupt and irreversible changes which can be quite devastating. These expressions of risk are determined fundamentally by location in time and space. This is what the work of the IPCC is Our effort is to project what would happen at different points of time and in different locations, if we don’t take any action.
The vulnerability of different regions in the year 2050 is shown here in this map. This is the extent to which we can project the vulnerability of different regions. You would observe that there are some regions where there are going to be modest to moderate expressions or indications of vulnerability.
Then there are other regions which, of course, are much more severely affected.
If we look at projections for the year 2100, then there’s a very large area of the globe that would be suffering from extreme or severe vulnerability.
Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri.
Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Director-General, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).
It is now becoming increasingly apparent that the global community, over several decades, has pursued a path of development which is clearly not sustainable.
In the context of climate change, we are now getting increasing evidence, based on observations, based on data that is available, that the path of development that we have adopted is leading to consequences with changes in the climate that clearly have extremely harmful impacts and hold the potential for far more serious impacts in the future.
The IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which functions under the umbrella of the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, has been able to come up with the Fourth Assessment Report which was released last year and how we have come up with a number of assessments of various aspects of climate change that go to the heart of this issue.
The work of the IPCC is guided by the mandate provided by WMO and UNEP, and its role is essentially to assess, on a comprehensive basis, objectively and transparently, the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of climate change, its potential impacts and options for both adaptation as well as mitigation measures. The review and writing process of the IPCC is very extensive.
Every draft of the report is carefully reviewed. The first draft is reviewed by expert reviewers, and governments and experts review the second draft of the report as well a draft summary for policy makers. Finally, the summary for policy makers of every report of the IPCC is reviewed and approved word by word by all the governments that are members of the IPCC. I want to place before this august gathering the elaborate,
transparent and objective manner in which IPCC comes up with its assessment.
By way of facts, the Fourth Assessment Report involved a total of 450 lead authors who actually wrote the report. In addition, we got inputs from 800 “contributing authors”. These are specialists who provide very specific inputs on highly specialized aspects of climate change to the authors who actually write the report. There were over 2500 scientific expert reviewers involved in the process. Every single comment that is received on the basis of these reviews is carefully logged and the authors have the choice of either accepting or rejecting each of these comments but they have to record which one was accepted and which one was not. Then, we have to record exactly why a particular comment was not accepted.
Let me now turn to some of the economic and social aspects of climate change. I want to refer to the large range of estimates of costs that we have carried out on the basis of the Fourth Assessment Report. If CO2 concentration was to double, then we could get a loss of GDP ranging anywhere from 1.5 to 20 percent globally and I am sure this is something that Lord Stern of Brentford will address with much greater precision on the basis of the work that he and his team have done. We also know that the cost of carbon could increase to a level
anywhere between $10 to $350 per ton. The real social cost of carbon will rise from two to four percent per year.
Now, the variation between studies is explained by uncertainties in climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivity is defined as the increase in temperature that would take place with doubling of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.
It is also dependent on discount rates, the valuation of impacts – and some of the impacts are so difficult to value in precise economic terms that we necessarily have to come up with a range of estimates. The aggregate estimates do mask significant differences in impacts across sectors and regions.
We in the IPCC feel very satisfied that in the Fourth Assessment Report we have been able to come up with a very clear estimation of physical and biological costs and impacts related to specific temperature increases that are going to take place in the future. And we have also been able to come up with a great deal of regional detail, because the impacts of climate change are clearly not uniform across the globe. To give an indication, the rate of warming itself is not uniform across the globe. The Arctic region, for instance, is warming at twice the rate of the average for the rest of the world. That is one of the reasons why the rate of melting of ice in the Arctic region is so rapid.
There are several impacts of climate change ranging from impacts on agriculture, on human health, on ecosystems, on species, on water resources. I would like to present before you some statistics in terms of estimates on what is likely to happen in the future. Around 1.1 to 3.2 billion people will experience increased water scarcity by 2080 as a result of climate change, and that’s a very large number. Here, again, there are going to be several differences across different regions of the globe. Just to mention one single set of projections: by 2020 itself, we expect that in Africa anywhere from 75 to 250 million people will be affected by increased water stress as a result of climate change. Crop revenues are likely to fall by about 90 percent by the end of the century in several parts of Africa. Again, to give a specific projection, by 2020 there will be several countries in Africa that are likely to see a decline in agricultural yields by up to 50 percent as a result of climate change. There is now growing evidence, based on research that is being carried out, that some crops are extremely sensitive to temperature increases, but in addition, agriculture will also be affected by increasing frequency as well as intensity of floods, droughts, heat waves, and other such factors. We also know that 22-30 per cent of the species that we have assessed in the IPCC could be at risk of extinction if increases in warming exceed 1.5 to 2.5°C. I would term this as an abrupt and irreversible change.
Just as if the Greenland or the Western Antarctic ice sheets were to collapse – and these are huge quantities of ice sitting on large areas of land several kilometers high – if any part of those were to collapse we could get sea level rise of several meters. That is clearly an abrupt and irreversible change.
Climate change, as we forecast, as we project into the future, does hold a potential for some of these abrupt and irreversible changes which can be quite devastating. These expressions of risk are determined fundamentally by location in time and space. This is what the work of the IPCC is Our effort is to project what would happen at different points of time and in different locations, if we don’t take any action.
The vulnerability of different regions in the year 2050 is shown here in this map. This is the extent to which we can project the vulnerability of different regions. You would observe that there are some regions where there are going to be modest to moderate expressions or indications of vulnerability.
Then there are other regions which, of course, are much more severely affected.
If we look at projections for the year 2100, then there’s a very large area of the globe that would be suffering from extreme or severe vulnerability.
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