April 01, 2014
YOKOHAMA – Climate change can indirectly increase the likelihood of violent conflict by exacerbating risk factors such as poverty and economic shocks, a UN scientific body warned yesterday.
After six days of talks through Sunday in Yokohama, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report assessing the impacts of climate change on human and natural systems, options for adaptation and opportunities for the future.
“Climate change over the 21st century is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resource significantly in most dry subtropical regions, intensifying competition for water,” the IPCC said.
Climate change is also expected to “increase displacement of people”, the panel said.
“Some trans-boundary impacts of climate change, such as changes in sea ice, shared water resources, and pelagic fish stocks, have the potential to increase rivalry among states.”
Some 500 scientists and governmental representatives from around the world gathered in the Japanese port city to review and make necessary changes to the report prepared by Working Group II. The meeting was initially scheduled to run for five days but needed another day to complete the work.
“Why should the world pay attention to this report? Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said at a press conference yesterday to wrap up the plenary session, the first in Japan.
The world needs to recognize “the importance of the impacts of climate change on human security because climate change can lead to displacement and increased conflict,” added Pachauri, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with former US Vice President Al Gore.
The IPCC’s fifth assessment report will be composed of three working group reports and a synthesis report. The Working Group III part is due out in April after another plenary meeting in Berlin, and the synthesis report will be released in October in Copenhagen.
In Yokohama, the IPCC also discussed how impacts and risks related to climate change can be reduced and managed through adaptation and mitigation.
“The report concludes that people, societies and ecosystems are vulnerable around the world, but with different vulnerability in different places,” said Christopher Field, co-chair of Working Group II.
“We definitely face challenges, but understanding those challenges and tackling them creatively can make climate-change adaptation an important way to help build a more vibrant world in the near term and beyond,” he said.
The report also pointed out that the effects of climate change are already occurring on all continents and across the oceans.
“The world, in many cases, is ill-prepared for risks from a changing climate,” the panel said. “There are opportunities to respond to such risks, though the risks will be difficult to manage with high levels of warming.”
The IPCC expects the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts to increase depending on the magnitude of global warming.
World leaders have agreed it would be dangerous to allow global temperatures to rise more than 2oC above preindustrial levels and have set the so-called 2-degree target.
“Some risks of climate change are considerable at 1 or 2oC above preindustrial level. Global climate change risks are high to very high with global mean temperature increase of 4oC or more above preindustrial level,” the IPCC said.
Global climate change risks “include severe and widespread impacts on unique and threatened systems, substantial species extinction, large risks to global and regional food security; and the combination of high temperature and humidity compromising normal human activities, including growing food or working outdoors in some areas for parts of the year,” the panel said.
(KYODO)