On 17 November, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), calling for new momentum on action to combat climate change and renewed pressure on political leaders worldwide.
The IPCC report paints a grim picture of the likely effects of climate change, stating that global warming is an ‘unequivocal’ phenomenon which has the potential to cause ‘irreversible damage’ to the planet. The report warned that reduced rainfall in Africa is set to aggravate existing water shortages and slash crop yields, whilst rising sea levels are set to bring major changes to coastlines. Rising air and ocean temperatures will pose a severe extinction risk to nearly a third of all plant and animal species.
Ban Ki-moon stressed that the report also concludes that ‘concerted and sustained action now can still avoid some of the most catastrophic scenarios’. The panel’s chair, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, said governments have ‘a wide variety of policies and instruments’ available to create incentives to mitigate behaviour – especially in the area of carbon emissions.
This latest report is the syntheses of three IPCC reports released earlier in the year, and its conclusions add a new urgency to the need for politicians to act. The report is expected to form the basis of discussions in Bali this December, when world leaders gather under the auspices of the UN to try to agree to a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, which is due to expire by 2012.
Ban Ki-moon spoke of his hope for a breakthrough agreement in Bali which would launch ‘negotiations for a comprehensive climate change deal that all nations can embrace – developed and developing countries alike.’
‘Scientists have now done their work’, said the Secretary-General, ‘I call on political leaders to do theirs’. |
