(CNN) -- Your forecast for the next century:
Hotter, drier and hungrier, and the chance to turn down the thermostat is
slipping away.
That's the latest conclusion from the United Nations, which
urged governments to address the "increasingly clear" threats posed
by a warming climate before some options are closed off for good.
The latest
report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that taking
steps to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions blamed for rising temperatures
could buy more time to adjust to a warmer world.
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A farmer and his children plant a field with bean seeds and
fertilizer in southern Ethiopia in 2008, a year after severe floods destroyed
most of the food crop. Ethiopia is the country 10th most vulnerable to climate
change effects, according
to a 2013 report by Maplecroft.
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Cutting emissions now "increases the time available for
adaptation to a particular level of climate change," the report states.
But it adds, "Delaying mitigation actions may reduce options for
climate-resilient pathways in the future."
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Manila, capital of the Philippines, is one of the five
cities, all in Asia and all projected to be centers of high economic growth,
that face "extreme risk" from climate change impacts, according to
the Maplecroft report.
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"In many cases, we are not prepared for the
climate-related risks that we already face," Vicente Barros, the
co-chaiman of the IPCC working group behind the document, said in a statement
accompanying the report. "Investments in better preparation can pay
dividends both for the present and for the future."
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| Cambodia is among the Southeast and South Asian countries tipped to face an increased risk of severe flooding because of projected changes in seasonal rainfall |
The summary for policymakers was released Monday morning in
Yokohama, Japan. It's the second part of the IPCC's benchmark assessment of
climate change, a document released every six years with the input of nearly
1,000 scientists. Without checks on emissions, the impacts of climate change
will be more severe, more likely, and possibly irreversible, it concludes.
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A fisherman sits in a boat on the shore of Lake Kivu in Goma
in August. "There are no big fish because of the gas; we only catch small
whitebait," one said of the carbon dioxide and methane that saturate the
lake.
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Monday's report underscores "that we have committed to
a certain amount of warming," said Kelly Levin, an energy and climate
expert at the U.S.-based World Resources Institute.
"Over the next few decades, we are going to lock
ourselves into a climate change commitment that is going to paint a very
different world, depending on what we choose today," Levin said. "The
choices we make today are going to affect the risks we face through the rest of
the century."
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Floodwaters course through Odo Ona in Nigeria's Oyo State in
2011. At least 102 people were killed when a dam burst during torrential rain.
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As a result, "Adaptation is emerging as central area in
climate change research," Levin said. But adaptation -- steps such as
building sea walls, conserving water and designing cities for warmer climates
-- has its limits, she said.
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Tainted water pours into a containment pond in a Unity field
processing facility in what is now South Sudan, where there are concerns about
the environmental damage being caused by the oil industry.
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"The report suggests some options are going to be too
resource-intensive or too expensive," she said.
An increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other
emissions have driven average temperatures up by about 0.6 degrees Celsius (1
degree Fahrenheit) since 1950, the IPCC says.
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Residents of Jacmel, Haiti, make their way through
floodwaters as Tropical Storm Isaac dumps heavy rains in August 2012. An
extreme exposure to climate-related events, combined with poor health care
access, weak infrastructure, high levels of poverty and an over-reliance on
agriculture have led to the country being categorized as at "extreme"
risk.
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The first part of its report, released in
September, concluded that even a best-case scenario would result in an
increase in global average temperatures of 1.6 C; the worst-case scenario
estimates a rise of 3.7 degrees Celsius (6.6 Fahrenheit).
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Felled trees lie on the mountainside just outside Freetown.
African countries account for 14 of the 20 most at-risk nations.
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The idea that carbon emissions are changing the Earth's
climate is politically controversial, but generally accepted as fact by the
overwhelming majority of scientists. And as emissions continue to rise,
driving up CO2
concentrations in the atmosphere, the impacts will be more severe,
more likely and possibly irreversible, Monday's report states.
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Residents walk past the Parliament in Bissau, capital of
Guinea-Bissau. African countries rank as at high risk in the index, partly due
to their natural susceptibility to events such as floods, droughts, fires,
storms or landslides. But their high ranking is also a product of the
vulnerability of the population and the inadequacies of existing infrastructure
to adapt to or tackle climate change challenges because of weak economies,
governance, education and health care.
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The summary of the full document -- which is more than
1,000 pages -- will be the premiere guide for lawmakers. It breaks down the
expected impacts by continent and by categories such as marine life,
agriculture and flood risks.
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Bangladeshis attempt to stay dry above flood waters in the
capital, Dhaka. Bangladesh was ranked by Maplecroft the country most vulnerable
to climate change, and Dhaka the world's most vulnerable city, due to its
exposure to threats such as flooding, storm surge, cyclones and landslides, its
susceptible population and weak institutional capacity to address the problem.
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And by diving into the specifics of the report,
policymakers will be able to see what risks their specific locations face, as
well as what adaptation and mitigation techniques could prove fruitful.
"The real highlight is how many impacts there are, how
widespread they are and how pervasive they are around the world," said
Heather McGray, who studies adaptation at WRI.
In most cases, climate change will exacerbate existing
problems, such as the availability of fresh water in sub-Saharan Africa. The
authors conclude that glaciers will continue to shrink "almost worldwide,"
affecting water supplies downstream.
Animals have begun shifting their habitats in response to a
warming world, and key crops have been affected already, they wrote. Colder
climates may see increases in crop yields from longer growing seasons and milder
temperatures, but the negative effects are expected to outweigh the positive,
the report states.
"In this report, the finding is the impacts of climate
change are already widespread and consequential," McGray said.
The impacts won't be the same for everyone, and as usual,
the world's poor are more likely to be hurt.
"Climate-related hazards affect poor people's lives
directly through impacts on livelihoods, reductions in crop yields or
destruction of homes and indirectly through, for example, increased food prices
and food insecurity," the report states.
Positive effects on the
impoverished "are limited and often indirect."
For those people, the effects "will be
catastrophic" unless emissions can be reduced, McGray said.
