Reading Response # 6

Reading the remaining topics (3-6) of the IPCC 2007 Synthesis Report was undoubtedly a challenging assignment. As it happened last week, working my way through the numerous charts, graphs, and sets of data proved to be a serious test to my attention span. (The commitment that the Synthesis Report demands from its readers made wonder about how many decision-makers have actually read through it, but that is not the topic of this response.) For my own sake, I will try to summarize some of the most significant and worrisome points that I was able to discern through the mass of information condensed in the Synthesis Report about the impacts of and the responses to climate change.

The Report describes six possible scenarios that take for granted the mitigation policies and sustainable development practices currently employed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is important to underline, as the Report does, that GHG emissions will continue to grow as long as the mitigation policies represented in all scenarios remain the same (44). The Report goes as far as to include this assertion into its list of “robust findings”, where it reaffirms that what is currently being done is simply not enough (72). What is more worrisome is that the Report has robustly found that “unmitigated climate change [is] likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt” (73).

This remark leads us to the issue of adaptation and mitigation. The former refers to measures aimed at diminishing the impact of climate change under current levels of GHG emissions and concentration, while the latter is focused on reducing GHG emissions (56). Vulnerability to the impacts of climate change is “a function of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity” (64). Mitigating policies are geared towards reducing exposure; adaptive policies seek to reduce sensitivity to the impacts of climate change. The Report stresses that neither mitigation nor adaptation alone are enough to avoid all the possible impacts of climate change (65). The list of policy options that the Report presents is too long summarize here, but it is important to note that the Report bases these policies on the deployment of technology that is already available or will be commercialized by 2030 (60), meaning that it is actually possible to plan and implement a good part of them right now.

The impacts of climate change target different systems, sectors, and regions. The Report contains a long list of impacts, both adverse and beneficial, that affect ecosystems, food supply, coastal areas, industry, human health, and water supply (48). It is necessary to note, however, that the effects of climate change are expected by the Report to be overall adverse. There is not enough space in this response to list all the impacts the Report explains, but an important point to underline is that there are certain groups and regions that are more vulnerable to climate change impacts. Certain groups like the poor, the elderly and young children are at greater risk, even in developed areas of the world (52). Regions like Africa, Asia, and insular areas are at a higher risk to suffer from important climate change-caused effects such as drought, hunger, and flood. To make matters worse, these areas often times have lower adaptive capabilities that make them even more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change (51-52). To be sure, the Report paints a grim picture, but it also underscores the availability of a wide array of adaptive and mitigating measures that can be employed to reduce and stabilize GHG emissions.