UN climate report urges world to adapt now, or suffer later
The report is the latest in a series by the IPCC detailing the latest global consensus on climate science. This report, however, focuses on how nature and societies are being affected and what they can do to adapt.
Nov 9: Country signatories to the UN climate change convention have to submit a plan - called the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) - every five years. This details how they plan to reduce carbon emissions - to help slow global warming - and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
India's updated NDC includes measures such as reducing the volume of carbon emissions per unit of GDP and cutting down use of fossil fuels to generate electricity.
But at the top of the list is "LiFE - Lifestyle for Environment", a "healthy and sustainable way of living based on traditions and values of conservation and moderation, including through a mass movement".
"The vision of LIFE is to live a lifestyle that is in tune with our planet and does not harm it," a government statement says. It was first proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the COP26 summit in Glasgow in 2021.
But experts say there is a contradiction between this aim and the increase in consumption that both drives and is spurred by economic growth.
"Modernity basically means increased consumption. The concept of LiFE is not in conformity with that trend of consumerism," says Dr Nilanjan Ghosh, president of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics.
Growing consumption, rising economy
India is now among the world's top economies, with estimated growth of around 7% this year - this is at a time when other major economic powers are facing a recession.
While inflation and global headwinds are causes for concern, consumer demand is strong. Private consumption forms about 55% of India's GDP, and experts expect this to continue to drive growth.
This, Dr Ghosh says, is why there is a "dichotomy" in the government's emphasis on LiFE.
"Will there be action to adopt a different lifestyle or will it be business as usual is the question," he says.
Eugenie Dugoua, an assistant professor in environmental economics at the London School of Economics, says solutions to the climate crisis will need to put the focus on ordinary people like the LiFE campaign has done.
"But we should not be overly optimistic about how much emission reduction will come out of it," she says, adding that research shows that while nudges like these can have a positive effect in the short term, this isn't sustainable in the long term.
Behavioural change is "necessary and important", but it can't be the main tool for policymakers, she adds.
"Instead, governments need to focus on structural change in the energy, transportation and agricultural systems."
Largest increase in energy demand
The biggest source of carbon emissions in India is the energy sector.
In its October report, the International Energy Agency said that India is likely to see the world's biggest jump in energy demand this decade, although its energy use on a per capita basis is well under half of the global average.
Some experts believe lifestyle changes are possible even with a continued rise in consumption.
"It is not about asking people to not buy air conditioners, but we can make the habit of keeping our room temperature at 25C, which will lead to a cut in our energy consumption," says Madhav Pai, acting CEO of World Resources Institute India, an international non-government organisation that is working with the Indian government to disseminate the message of the LiFE programme.
Mr Pai says the campaign envisages helping people to gradually change their lifestyle.
"It is a nudge to 1.5 billion Indians for behavioural change towards a circular economy - to make them sign up for it."
A larger message
The Indian government has also positioned LiFE as a message to western countries.
"The consumption pattern of the world is mindless and pays scant regard to the environment," wrote India's environment and climate change minister Bhupender Yadav in the Indian Express newspaper in October, days after Mr Modi unveiled an action plan for Mission LiFE.
"Mission LiFE tries to remind the world that the mindset of 'use and throw' must immediately be replaced by 'reduce, reuse and recycle', he added.
But India is also facing its own share of serious environmental problems.
A report by Delhi-based think-tank Centre for Science and Environment showed that India generated 3.5 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2019-20, of which only 12% was recycled and 20% burned.
"The remaining 68% remains unaccounted for, which means it is in the environment (land and water) or in dumpsites," the report said.
It also found that three out of every four river monitoring stations in India posted alarming levels of heavy toxic metals.
Air pollution is a major concern, especially in northern Indian states.
A World Bank report released earlier this year ranks India among the countries that have the worst environmental health - the government has contested the report's methodology and offered its own environmental and sustainability parameters.
Successive governments have also been accused of ignoring environmental laws while pushing for infrastructure and development projects, especially in the fragile Himalayan region.
Experts say all this needs to be addressed by a government that wants people to change their lifestyles to fight against climate change.
"Change has to be wholesome," Dr Ghosh says.
"The two [government's actions and people's behaviour] will need to be in consonance." (with inputs from BBC)
Nov 6: More than 120 world are leaders heading to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
About 30,000 people will attend the two-week summit, known as COP27, though some activists are staying away over concerns about Egypt's rights record.
The past year has seen extreme weather regularly linked to climate change.
The summit will open with welcome speeches from the UN's new climate change chief, Simon Stiell, and Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister and COP27 President-Designate Sameh Shoukry.
Mr Stiell was previously a senior government official in Grenada, the low-lying Caribbean nation where climate change is an existential threat.
Mr Shoukry said last week that the conference would be "the world's watershed moment on climate action".
There will also be key addresses from diplomats and scientists including Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC, the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.
COP27 will really begin in earnest on Monday with a World Leaders' Summit, when heads of state and government leaders deliver five-minute addresses outlining what they want from the meeting.
At the last climate summit, in Glasgow last year, there were powerful speeches from people like Barbadian PM Mia Mottley, who told an enrapt audience that temperature rises of "two degrees is a death sentence" for island nations.
World leaders will speak on Monday and Tuesday, and once they depart, conference delegates get down to the business of negotiation.
At last year's COP26 summit in Glasgow a number of pledges were agreed:
-to "phase down" the use of coal - one of the most polluting fossil fuels
-to stop deforestation by 2030
-to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030
-to submit new climate action plans to the UN
Mr Stiell has called for this summit to be focused on turning last year's pledges into action and "get moving on the massive transformation that must take place".
All of that will come down to money.
Developing nations - which are at the forefront of climate change - are demanding that previous commitments to finance are upheld.
But they also want there to be discussion on "loss and damage" finance - money to help them cope with the losses they are already facing from climate change rather than just to prepare for future impacts. This would be the first time the issue has been put on the formal agenda of a COP summit.
The urgency of the climate change issue has been evident during the past 12 months with devastating flooding in Pakistan as well as in places including Nigeria and extreme heat in India and Europe in the summer.
Ahead of the conference a series of major climate reports were released outlining progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The UNEP emissions gap report concluded that there was "no credible pathway" to keep the rise in global temperatures below the key threshold of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
This 1.5 degree limit was agreed back in 2015 in the Paris Agreement at the 21st UN Climate Summit, COP21. All subsequent climate summits have focused on developing actions to achieve this goal.
As well as all the formal negotiations there will be hundreds of events over the two weeks with exhibitions, workshops and cultural performances from youth, business groups, indigenous societies, academia, artists and fashion communities from all over the world.
Protests - which are normally a vibrant feature of COP summits - are likely to be subdued.
Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, in power since 2014, has overseen a widespread crackdown on dissent. Rights groups estimate the country has had as many as 60,000 political prisoners, many detained without trial.
Mr Shoukry has said that space would be set aside in Sharm el-Sheikh for protests to take place. However, Egyptian activists have told the BBC that many local groups had been unable to register for the conference.
Glaciers across the globe - including the last ones in Africa - will be unavoidably lost by 2050 due to climate change, the UN says in a report. A third of glaciers located in UN World Heritage sites will melt within three decades, a UNESCO report found.
UNITED NATIONS, June 9: The world is facing a cost-of-living crisis unseen in at least a generation, partly due to the Ukraine conflict, said a UN report on Wednesday.
"The largest cost-of-living crisis of the 21st century has come when people and countries have a limited capacity to cope," said the second report of the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance over the Ukraine conflict.
The Ukraine conflict has trapped the people of the world between a rock and a hard place. The rock is the severe price shocks in food, energy and fertilizer markets, given the centrality of both Russia and Ukraine in these markets. The hard place is the extremely fragile context in which this crisis arrived: a world facing the cascading crises of COVID-19 and climate change, it said.
"A shock of this magnitude would have been a significant challenge no matter the timing. Now, it is of historic, century-defining proportions," the report said.
The Food and Agriculture Organization's food price index is at near-record levels and 20.8 percent higher than at this time last year. Energy market volatility has increased with the recognition that a prolonged conflict will lead to higher energy prices in the medium to long term. Crude oil has now reached over 120 U.S. dollars per barrel and energy prices overall are expected to rise by 50 percent in 2022 relative to in 2021. Fertilizer prices are more than double the 2000-2020 average. Maritime transport costs are more than triple the pre-pandemic average due to the lingering effects of COVID-19 and the destruction of the transport infrastructure of Ukraine, as well as higher volume of traffic- and congestion-related delays and other factors such as rising fuel costs, said the report.
Rising interest rates and growing investor uncertainty have eroded both the value of developing countries' currencies, as well as their capacity to borrow in foreign markets, it said.
"Of greatest concern are the vicious cycles beginning to emerge along the transmission channels of the crisis," said the report.
Higher energy prices, especially diesel and natural gas, increase the costs of fertilizers and transport. Both factors increase the costs of food production. This leads to reduced farm yields and to even higher food prices next season. These, in turn, add to inflation metrics, contributing to what were already increasing interest rate pressures and tightening financial conditions. Tighter financial conditions erode the buying power of the currencies of developing countries, further increasing the import costs of food and energy, reducing fiscal space and increasing the costs of servicing debt, it said.
The vicious cycles created by a cost-of-living crisis can also spark social and political instability, warned the report.
To break the vicious cycles that feed into and accelerate this cost-of-living crisis, two broad approaches are required: mitigating the impacts of the shock and increasing the capacity of people and countries to cope, it said.
To mitigate the impacts of the crisis, markets must be made more stable and debt and commodity prices must be stabilized. This is critical to immediately restore the availability of food for all people and all countries with equitable and adequate supplies at accessible prices.
An effective solution to the food crisis cannot be found without reintegrating food production in Ukraine, as well as food and fertilizers produced in Russia, into global markets. Other initiatives include continuing to release strategic food and energy stockpiles into markets, controlling hoarding and other speculative behavior, avoiding unnecessary trade restrictions and committing to increased efficiency in the use of energy and fertilizers in developed countries, said the report.
To increase the capacity of people and countries to cope, social protection systems and safety nets must be widened and fiscal space must be increased, it said.
Social protection measures and fiscal space are, in fact, linked. Countries need support from the financial institutions to increase their fiscal space to, in turn, increase social protection spending, including cash transfers to the most vulnerable. The international community needs to help countries protect their poor and vulnerable, it said.
There is no answer to the cost-of-living crisis without an answer to the crisis of finance in developing countries, said the report.
Existing international financing mechanisms to support strong national fiscal responses need to be fully funded and operationalized quickly. Multilateral development banks must be capitalized and apply more flexible lending ratios.
The global debt architecture is not ready to face the current crisis, which arrives during a moment of record-high debt levels and rising interest rates. Current tighter monetary conditions increase the risk of a systemic debt crisis, said the report.
The Group of 20's Debt Service Suspension Initiative should be renewed, and maturities should be pushed back by two to five years. The Common Framework for Debt Treatment needs to be improved. A systematic approach to multilateral debt restructuring and relief, which includes vulnerable middle-income countries, must also be pursued to ensure long-term solutions to current challenges, it said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for immediate action. "The message of today's report is clear and insistent: we must act now to save lives and livelihoods over the next months and years. It will take global action to fix this global crisis. We need to start today."
UN Conference on Trade and Development Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan, a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Crisis Response Group, who launched the report together with Guterres, also stressed the urgency of the matter.
"We are in a race against time. This is why we are calling for action, action, and action. Dealing with the consequences of inaction -- let me assure you -- will be much more costly for all than acting now," she said.
GENEVA, Oct. 6: The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN), warned on Tuesday that climate change increases the global risk of water-related hazards like floods and droughts, and the number of people affected by water scarcity is also expected to soar.
In its new report entitled "The State of Climate Services 2021: Water," the WMO says that 3.6 billion people globally had inadequate access to water at least one month per year in 2018, and by 2050 this number is expected to exceed five billion. "The situation is worsening by the fact that only 0.5 percent of water on Earth is useable and available freshwater," the report says.
The WMO's data show that water-related hazards have increased in frequency over the past 20 years. Since 2000, flood-related disasters have risen by 134 percent compared with the two previous decades, while during the same period the number and duration of droughts also increased by 29 percent.
Most drought-related deaths occurred in Africa, indicating a need for stronger end-to-end warning systems for drought in that region. Most of the flood-related deaths and economic losses were recorded in Asia, while Africa was hit the most by drought-related deaths. "Increasing temperatures are resulting in global and regional precipitation changes, leading to shifts in rainfall patterns and agricultural seasons, with a major impact on food security and human health and well-being," says WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
Last year saw a continuation of extreme water-related events, which displaced millions of people and killed hundreds across Asia, while in Africa more than two billion people still live in water-stressed countries and suffer lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation, according to the WMO chief.
Underlining the important role of water resources management in reducing water-related disasters, the WMO recommends that countries, especially small island developing states and least developed countries, increase investment in integrated water resources management and in drought and flood early warning systems.
The WMO also urges countries to fill the capacity gap in collecting data for basic hydrological variables, which underpin climate services and early warning systems, and national level stakeholders to co-develop and operationalize climate services with information users to better support adaptation in the water sector.
LONDON, August 8: An upcoming UN report on climate change gives the international community its clearest ever warning about the dangers of accelerating climate change, Britain's COP26 President Alok Sharma said on Sunday.
The chief for the November summit due to be held in the Scottish city of Glasgow told the Observer newspaper a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due on Monday would show the world was on the brink of potential disaster.
"This is going to be the starkest warning yet that human behaviour is alarmingly accelerating global warming and this is why COP26 has to be the moment we get this right," Sharma said.
"We can't afford to wait two years, five years, 10 years -- this is the moment," he added, explaining that unless nations "act now, we will unfortunately be out of time".
Sharma was forced to defend British fossil-fuel projects that include plans to license new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, which have proven embarrassing for Britain as it seeks to galvanise international action on climate change.
The Paris-based watchdog, the International Energy Agency (IAE), has warned all fossil fuel development and exploration must cease this year if the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius is to be met.
"Future (fossil fuel) licences are going to have to adhere to the fact we have committed to go to net zero by 2050 in legislation," the COP26 president said.
"There will be a climate check on any licences," he added.
A series of catastrophic emergencies in recent weeks including floods in Europe and China, record temperatures in North America and forest fires around the world have focused minds on global warming, Sharma said.
"We're seeing the impacts across the world," Sharma said. "Every day you will see a new high being recorded in one way or another across the world," he added.
Sharma said he was "throwing the kitchen sink" at efforts to reach a deal on the contentious target to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, holding a large number of virtual and in-person meetings as he looks to bring 197 countries together in consensus on the aim.
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