STATEMENT: ‘Unflinching’ IPCC Report Makes Plain, Personal and Planetary Costs are Mounting
WASHINGTON (February 28, 2022)—Today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a new climate science report from its Working Group II on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability.
The IPCC report finds that dangerous and costly impacts are coming earlier and are more widespread and extensive than previously thought and very significant climate impacts are unavoidable in the near-term. The analysis highlights how development challenges, like poverty and conflict, make certain people even more vulnerable to climate change. It makes clear that adaptation is crucial to avert or minimize as many irreversible losses and damages as possible.
Following is a statement from Ani Dasgupta, President & CEO, World Resources Institute:
“The IPCC report is plain as day. The enormous personal and planetary costs of climate inaction are already mounting. Our goal is to limit global temperature rise to 1.5oC but we’re already living in a world that is 1.1oC warmer than pre-industrial levels. Climate impacts are more intense and more frequent than we thought possible at this stage. Still, we continue to burn fossil fuels, cut down trees, eat carbon-intensive foods, and emissions continue to rise.
“Climate change is the ultimate injustice. People with the fewest resources, those least responsible for the climate crisis, bear the brunt of climate impacts. 3.3 billion people, or just over 40 percent of the global population, now live in highly vulnerable hotspots. If you don’t live in a hotspot, imagine instead a roof blown away, a village well overwhelmed by salt water, a failed crop, a job lost, a meal skipped – all at once, again and again. Compounding and cascading climate impacts, combined with poverty and conflict, all conspire to upend billions of lives and livelihoods.
“There is hope. We still have a narrow pathway to avoid the very worst climate impacts. The world’s heaviest emitters must urgently cut emissions, significantly scale up international funding for adaptation to strengthen resilience to climate impacts, and provide funding to vulnerable countries to deal with unavoidable losses and damages. At the same time, governments must quickly turn the many promising adaptation plans into action on the ground to protect food, water, homes, and critical infrastructure. The newest IPCC report offers the definitive scientific foundation on which policymakers should build their action plans for climate resilient development for all.
“The longer we wait to act the harder this will be. Nowhere will this be more evident than at Africa’s COP27 summit this November. In Egypt, developed nations will be judged on two fronts: their commitment to rapidly cut emissions and their commitment to delivering far greater financial resources to vulnerable communities to boost resilience and deal with unavoidable climate damages. This unflinching IPCC report sets the stage for COP27 in Egypt, where at long last solidarity and justice will be front and center.”