What is the issue?
A recent Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) draft report on climate change response draws global attention.
What is the report on?
- The report comes on the direction of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015.
- Accordingly, IPCC was asked to prepare a special report by 2018.
- This would be on the impact if the planet grew hotter by 1.5°C over the global average surface temperatures between 1850 and 1900.
What are the highlights?
- The basic message is that the world is not doing enough to keep the planet from heating up excessively.
- If the emissions continue at the present rate, global warming will exceed by 1.5°C over the reference period by around 2040.
- The current measures such as rise of renewable energy and electric vehicles are just not enough.
- The inevitable consequences will be more
- floods and droughts
- forest fires
- islands losing ground to rising sea waters
- water scarcity
- vector-borne diseases
- This reiterates what the UN Environment Programme has been emphasizing in its annual Emission Gap Reports.
- In 2016 report, it said that even if countries stick to their Paris deal commitments, the target would not be met.
What are the concerns and challenges ahead?
- Paris deal - At Paris in 2015, all countries agreed to limit global warming to 2°C by the turn of this century.
- This aside, they also agreed on an ambitious goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
- But the Agreement is loosely-worded, and leaves everything to voluntary action with no penal provisions.
- US - The United States has recently pulled out of the Paris accord.
- It has also begun to support coal, a fuel chiefly responsible for the climate change.
- Further, the US has slashed its contribution to the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
- Resultantly, developed countries’ funding to GEF has come down by $300 million.
- Notably, GEF is a big funder of climate projects in developing countries.
- Australia - Australia is also following the US’s example.
- It has also said that coal would have an important role in the country’s energy mix.
- Coal - With US and Australia backing coal, poor countries like Indonesia are taking the opportunity.
- Having seen good returns in exporting coal over the last decade, it wants to do more.
- The situation is likely to worsen with the development of a new Russia-funded railway.
- The railway will open up new areas of Kalimantan (Indonesian part of Borneo island) for coal.
- Banks are also not doing enough to restrict funding for coal projects.
- Deforestation - According to Stockholm Environment Institute, permits for mining cover 6.3 million hectares of Conservation Forest and Protected Forest areas.
- In 2017, the tropics lost nearly 16 million hectares (size of Bangladesh) to deforestation.
- Measures - A recent International Energy Agency report looked at 35 areas requiring action, to be consistent with the 2°C goal.
- Out of the 35, only four were on the right track and these are solar PV, LED, e-vehicles and data centres.
- The IPCC report comes as a wake up call for nations to relook and reassess the climate strategies.
Source: BusinessLine
