A landmark report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) detailing what countries must do to stem climate change is to be published late Monday following delays amid disagreements over its wording.
IPCC scientists and governments from some 200 countries have spent the last two weeks working on the document, which focuses heavily on the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels.
The third of three major IPCC studies published over the past eight months, the work is intended to both inform policymakers about climate realities as well as advise them on what they must do to tackle the issue.
While the first report explained the scientific basis of climate change, the second looked at efforts to adapt to extreme events such as heat waves, floods and rising sea levels.
Implications
Monday’s report deals with the tricky subject of mitigation – and it will have implications for countries on the transformational decisions they will be forced to take in order to phase out fossil fuels by the end of the decade.
Experts have already warned emissions must be halved by 2030 if the world is to cap warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius and stave off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
“The climate crisis is accelerating and fossil fuels are the overwhelming cause,” Nikki Reisch of the Center for International Environmental Law, told AFP.
“Any report on mitigation that fails to emphasise that fact is denying the very science to which the IPCC is committed.”
Record negotiations
Talks on the final text continued past their deadline on Sunday – the longest negotiations in the IPCC’s 34-year history – as governments haggled with scientists over questions of ending fossil fuel subsidies and providing funding for developing countries.
As well as the move to greener energy sources – solar, wind, hydro, hydrogen and even nuclear – the report will also a focus on implementing the widespread use of technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
“Everybody has something to lose and everybody has something to gain,” a source close to the process told AFP.
Existing carbon commitments have the world on track for a devastating 2.7C of warming by the end of the century.
Global temperatures are already at about 1.1C above the pre-industrial average.
