A new call for global climate action

The latest UN report on climate change has sounded another warning about the disaster that the world is relentlessly heading into. The multi-agency report, called United in Science 2020, prepared by UN bodies and science organisations and co-ordinated by the World Meteorological Organisation, presents the latest data and findings about climate change and calls for global policy and action to counter it. It has pointed to the impact of climate change on glaciers, oceans, nature, economies and human living conditions and how this is resulting in water-related hazards like drought or flooding which are becoming more frequent. The report also details the difficulties caused by Covid-19 in monitoring some of the changes through the systems set up to study them. The disruptions caused by the pandemic have introduced gaps in the data series which are important in the assessment of the changes. But that does not detract from the seriousness of the situation.

The report says that global warming, caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is “closing in on a serious milestone’’. The emissions, which saw a temporary decline due to lockdowns, are now fast reaching pre-pandemic levels. The last five years were the warmest in documented history, and in future, every year is likely to be warmer than the previous year. The report notes that the world is not set to meet agreed targets to keep the global temperature from rising by more than 2°C. What it shows is that the agreements reached at the meetings in Paris, Cancun, Copenhagen and other venues are still unimplemented in any sense by any country that makes substantial GHG emissions. The worst polluter of the world, the US, has withdrawn from the Paris agreement. Though most other countries pay lip service to policies that are needed to fight climate change, there is no real plan or action. This is when the world is witnessing increasing instances of climate disasters like the wild fires in the US, Australia and the Amazon and other events like floods, drought, storms, changes in rainfall patterns and the rapid melting of icebergs and glaciers.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that we must “turn the recovery from the pandemic into a real opportunity to build a better future.” This needs to be stressed, especially because the pandemic may have introduced more divisions in the world and made unified actions more difficult than in the past. The report can be considered an update of the situation and the world can ignore its call for effective global action only at its peril.