Rising Temperatures, Rising Risks

• Author: Mohan Munasinghe
• Position: Vice Chair of the Geneva-based Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, and Chairman of the Sri Lanka-based Munasinghe Institute for Development (MIND)
• Pages: 37-41

Page 37

Making development more sustainablewill helpaddress climatechange

GLOBAL warming is already taking its toll. In Darfur, where several hundred thousand people have died in recent years from the internal conflict, climate change has exacerbated water and land shortages (because of growing desertification), undermined agriculture, and fueled conflict over these scarce resources among the poor. On the opposite side of the globe, many Pacific islands (and the Maldives) that are often only centimeters above sea level are threatened with inundation by rising seas. In the distant north, melting of the sea ice is affecting polar wildlife and undermining the already precarious livelihoods of native peoples.

These grim harbingers of climate change underline the need to better understand the phenomenon and address the consequences. The latest report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that global warming is a reality and has almost certainly been caused by recent human activities that have increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It also indicates that climate change (characterized by temperature increase, sea level rise, and precipitation changes) will continue into the foreseeable future and intensify (see Box 1), with potentially disastrous consequences for the planet and its inhabitants. The most vulnerable groups will be the poor, the elderly, and children, including those living in rich countries. The most affected regions will be the Arctic, sub-saharan Africa, small islands, and Asian megadeltas. High risks will be associated with low-lying coastal areas, water resources in dry tropics and subtropics, agriculture in low-latitude regions, key ecosystems (such as coral reefs), and human health in poor areas. Moreover, extreme weather events will worsen, especially tropical cyclones and heat waves. The result is that prospects for achieving many of the eight 2015 Millennium Development Goals-which include poverty reduction, better health and education, gender equality, and saving the environment-will become even more remote.

How can this destructive cycle be broken? the best hope lies in crafting strategies that address climate change and sustainable development simultaneously. This is because the two issues are highly interconnected: climate change affects development prospects and development paths determine the future climate. At the global level, countries need to act in a concerted fashion to reshape human activities on an unprecedented scale although, sadly, current trends are not at all promising (see Box 2). At the national level, however, the outlook might be more hopeful, given that practical methods now exist for integrating Page 38 climate change responses into sustainable development strategies. Indeed, the existence of these tools should help to dispel the concern of many policymakers that tackling climate change might divert resources that are sorely needed to deal with more immediate development problems, such as growth, poverty, food security, ill health, unemployment, and inflation.

How humans can cope

The two specific ways that humans can respond to climate change are through adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation tries to reduce the vulnerability of human and natural systems to the stresses of climate change, whereas mitigation aims to lower, or even remove, GHG emissions.

Adaptation responses. Adaptation efforts need to be stepped up, given that long-term, unmitigated climate change is likely to exceed the adaptive capacity of natural, managed (agricultural), and human systems. Natural organisms and ecosystems tend to adapt autonomously (for example, migration of animals as habitats change, and growth-cycle changes in plants), but many may not survive if the rate of temperature rise is too rapid. Humans are capable of preplanned (or anticipatory) adaptation, although reactive measures are often necessary. Proven adaptation methods exist-including building dikes against sea level rise, developing temperature-or drought-resistant crops, and widening hazard insurance coverage-but they need to be disseminated more widely and implemented by governments, businesses, and civil society. Take coastal areas threatened by flooding and storms as temperatures rise. With constant expenditures on coastal protection, about 55-90 million people will be affected annually by a 2°C warming. However, these numbers may be drastically cut (to 2-10 million) by marginally raising annual coastal protection spending to match GDP growth rates.

Mitigation responses. Current mitigation efforts-primarily, reducing the emission intensity of energy use and increasing carbon dioxide absorption by planting forests-similarly need to improve. The result would be lower GHG concentrations, along with other benefits, such as better health, lower energy demand leading to greater energy security, and greater energy availability for poor and rural areas. At this point, we know the technological and policy options that could stabilize GHG concentrations in the range of 450-550 parts per million by volume (ppmv)...