UN report to provide stark climate warning
BERLIN, March 20, (AP): A major new United Nations report being released Monday is expected to provide a sobering reminder that time is running out if humanity wants to avoid passing a dangerous global warming threshold.
The report by hundreds of the world’s top scientists is the capstone on a series that summarizes the research on global warming compiled since the Paris climate accord was agreed in 2015.
It was approved by countries at the end of a week-long meeting of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in the Swiss town of Interlaken, meaning governments have accepted its findings as authoritative advice on which to base their actions.
At the start of the meeting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned delegates that the planet is “nearing the point of no return” and they risk missing the internationally agreed limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) of global warming since pre-industrial times.
That’s because global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases keep increasing - mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and intensive agriculture - when in fact they need to decline quickly.
Governments agreed in Paris almost eight years ago to try to limit temperature rise to 1.5 C or at least keep it well below 2 C (3.6 F). Since then scientists have increasingly argued that any warming beyond the lower threshold would put humanity at dire risk.
Average global temperatures have already increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 19th century, but Guterres insisted last week that the 1.5 C target limit remains possible “with rapid and deep emissions reductions across all sectors of the global economy.”
Monday’s report comes after the IPCC made clear two years ago that climate change is clearly caused by human activity and refined its predictions for a range of possible scenarios depending on how much greenhouse gas continues to be released.
Inevitable
The following year it published a report concluding that the impacts of global warming are already being felt and nearly half the world’s population are “highly vulnerable to climate change.” Two months later it laid out what needs to be done to reduce the harm from warming that’s already inevitable and prevent a further dangerous rise in temperatures; the sharp drop in cost of solar and wind power would make that easier, it noted.
Three further special reports by the IPCC focused on the oceans, land and 1.5-degree target. The next round of reports won’t be published until the second half of this decade, by when experts say it could be too late to take further measures allowing that ambitious goal to still be met.
Governments agreed at last year’s climate summit in Egypt to create a fund to help pay for the damage that a warming planet is inflicting on vulnerable countries, but failed to commit to new measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The new synthesis report published Monday will play a pivotal role when governments gather in Dubai in December for this year’s UN climate talks. The meeting will be the first to take stock of global efforts to cut emissions since the Paris deal, and hear calls from poorer nations seeking more aid.
Guterres, the UN chief, recently argued that fossil fuel companies should hand over some of their vast profits to help victims of climate change.
The report by hundreds of the world’s top scientists was supposed to be approved by government delegations on Friday at the end of a weeklong meeting in the Swiss town of Interlaken.
The closing gavel was repeatedly pushed back as officials from big nations such as China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the United States and the European Union haggled through the weekend over the wording of key phrases in the text.
The report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change caps a series that digests vast amounts of research on global warming compiled since the Paris climate accord was agreed in 2015.
A summary of the report was approved early Sunday but agreement on the main text dragged on for several more hours, with some observers fearing it might need to be postponed.
The UN plans to publish the report at a news conference early Monday afternoon.
The unusual process of having countries sign off on a scientific report is intended to ensure that governments accept its findings as authoritative advice on which to base their actions.
At the start of the meeting, Guterres called on delegates to provide “cold, hard facts ” to drive home the message that there’s little time left for the world to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial times.
While average global temperatures have already increased by 1.1 Celsius since the 19th century, Guterrres insisted that the 1.5-degree target limit remains possible “with rapid and deep emissions reductions across all sectors of the global economy.”
Observers said the IPCC meetings have increasingly become politicized as the stakes for curbing global warming increase, mirroring the annual UN climate talks that usually take place at the end of the year.
Among the thorniest issues at the current meeting were how to define which nations count as vulnerable developing countries, making them eligible for cash from a “loss and damage” fund agreed on at the last UN climate talks in Egypt.
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NAIROBI, Kenya: A new report says an estimated 43,000 people died amid the longest drought on record in Somalia last year and half of them likely were children.
It is the first official death toll announced in the drought withering large parts of the Horn of Africa.
At least 18,000 people are forecast to die in the first six months of this year.
“The current crisis is far from over,” says the report released Monday by the World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s agency and carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Somalia and neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya are facing a sixth consecutive failed rainy season while rising global food prices complicate the hunger crisis.
The UN and partners earlier this year said they were no longer forecasting a formal famine declaration for Somalia for now but called the situation “extremely critical” with more than 6 million people hungry in that country alone.
Famine is the extreme lack of food and a significant death rate from outright starvation or malnutrition combined with diseases like cholera. A formal famine declaration means data shows more than a fifth of households have extreme food gaps, more than 30% of children are acutely malnourished and over two people out of 10,000 are dying every day.
Some humanitarian and climate officials this year have warned that trends are worse than in the 2011 famine in Somalia in which a quarter-million people died.
Millions of livestock have died in the current crisis compounded by climate change and insecurity as Somalia battles thousands of fighters with al-Qaeda’s East Africa affiliate, al-Shabab.