Published 6th Apr, 2022

By Abdullah Tijani

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body responsible for advancing the science of climate change, has warned against the risk of world leaders’ failure to fulfill promises on climate change mitigation.

According to the report submitted on Monday, the world has reached a stage where attaining excessive global warming is unavoidable.

“Global warming, reaching 1.5°C in the near-term, would cause unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards and present multiple risks to ecosystems and humans,” the report reads in part.

“Near-term warming and increased frequency, severity and duration of extreme events will place many terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems at high or high risks of biodiversity loss.”

The report also projects increment in biodiversity loss and degradation, damages to and transformation of ecosystems as the mid to long-term risks.

“Climate change will increasingly put pressure on food production and access, especially in vulnerable regions, undermine food security and nutrition,” the report warns.

‘IT IS NOW OR NEVER‘

At a press conference titled “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Effect”, which was streamed live on YouTube on Monday, Jim Skea, the Co-Chair of the IPCC Working Group confirmed the report as the last warning to address global warming.

“It is now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F),” Skea said. “The report is very clear: We are not talking about business as usual if we are to address climate change.

“The report contains lots of assessments of the feasibility of the various options and of the kind of systems changes that would be needed.

“The longer we put off action, the bigger the feasibility challenge will be. We need to take action now or 1.5ºC will become out of reach; it will be physically impossible to get there.”

Speaking at the conference, Abdallah Mokssit, the secretary of the IPCC, stressed the collaboration between government and scientists to avert an excessive climate crisis.

“IPCC’s reports depend on the willingness of governments and scientists to listen to each other and work together.”

In a statement delivered at the conference, Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, urged that the next Conference of the Parties (COP) must focus on bringing more ambitious pledges to tackle the climate crisis.

“Increased action must begin this year, not next year,” Andersen said. “This month, not next month. Today, not tomorrow. Otherwise, we will, as the UN Secretary-General put it, continue to sleepwalk into climate catastrophe.”

In his remarks on the report, António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, faulted the unavoidable global warming on the unfulfilled promises of world leaders.

“This report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a litany of broken climate promises,” he said. “It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world.

“We are on a fast track to climate disaster: major cities under water, unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms. Widespread water shortages. The extinction of a million species of plants and animals.

“This is not fiction or exaggeration.”

Share on Social Media