The 21st Century climate challenge

Rising CO2 emissions are pushing up stocks & increasing temperatures

– In the past 100 years the earth has warmed 0.70C

– Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are increasing at 1.9 ppm each year. It reached 379 ppm in 2005

– Between 2000 and 2005 an average of 26 Gt of CO2 was released into the atmosphere each year

Tackling Climate Change: Global carbon accounting

• Defining dangerous – keeping within 2oC increase from the start of the industrial era (1861-1890)

• Establishing a 21st Century carbon budget at 1,456 Gt CO2

• Defining a sustainable emission’s pathway

• The problem of inertia– the case for adaptation

Risk, Vulnerability and Climate Change

• Climate risk is a fact for the entire world

• Vulnerability is a measure of capacity to manage climate hazards without suffering a long-term potentially irreversible loss of well-being

The state of human development shapes the process by which risk is converted into

vulnerability

“Human Rights and the environment are interdependent and interrelated”

Mary Robinson

Five human development tipping points:

Reduced agricultural productivity

Collapse of ecosystems

Heightened water insecurity – glacial melting

Increased health risks

Increased exposure to extreme weather events – tropical storms, coastal flooding, sea level rise

Disaster risk is skewed towards developing countries

• 1 in 19 people are affected in developing countries

• The corresponding number is 1 in 1,500 in OECD countries

A risk differential of 79

The human development backdrop

The backdrop includes some good news

– The share of the population living on less than US$ 1 a day has fallen from 29 percent in 1990 to 18 percent in 2004

– Extreme poverty fell by 135 million between 1999 and 2005

– During the period 1990 to 2004, child mortality rates have fallen from 106 deaths per 1,000 live births to 83

– Life expectancy for developing countries has increased from 56 (1970-75) to 65 (2000-05)

Other news are not as good…

• Poverty, child mortality and malnutrition

– There are still around 1 billion people living on less than a dollar a day. The 1st MDG could be missed by around 380 million people

– Around 28 percent of children in LDCs are underweight or stunted.

– Only 32 countries (of 147) are on track to achieve the MDG on child mortality

• Inequality

– More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening

– Underlying inequalities act as a barrier for early recovery after shocks

Among the threats to human development identified by Fighting climate change:

• Additional 600 million people facing malnutrition

• Productivity losses of 26 percent by 2060 in semi-arid areas of sub-Saharan Africa causing revenue losses in excess to the total bilateral aid to the region in 2005

• 1.8 billion people facing water stress • Displacement of up to 332 million people in

coastal and low-lying areas• Additional 400 million people facing the risk of

malaria

Forces unleashed by global warming could stall and then reverse progress built up over

generations

• Dietary adjustments– Substituted meat for vegetables– Eat smaller portions– Reduced number of meals per day

• Reducing expenditures

• Generating cash for food– Depleting savings– Borrowing money– Selling livestock or poultry– Selling house or household items– Sending children to look for money

• Migrating?

All these options may not be available to households in all contexts

When adopted in situations of distress may not be conducive to enhancing human development

How do people cope with shocks?

Low human development traps

The potential human costs of climate change have been understated

• In Ethiopia, children exposed to a drought in early childhood are 36 percent more likely to be malnourished five years later – a figure that translates into 2 million additional cases of child malnutrition

• Indian women born during a drought or a flood in the 1970s were 19 percent less likely to ever attend primary school

Climate related risks force people into downward spirals of disadvantage that undermine future

opportunities

Adapting to the inevitable: national action and

international cooperation

“If you are neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.”

Montesquieu

• By mid-2007, actual multilateral financing delivered through UNFCCC funds US$ reached 26 million

• This is equivalent to one week spending in floods defences in the UK

• Amounts are not the only problem. Timing and fulfillment of pledges present further limitations

Towards adaptation apartheid?Developed country investments dwarf

adaptation funds

The adaptation challenge

• Exposure to the risk of climate disasters is expected to rise

– Expansion of unplanned human settlements, – Environmental degradation and – Marginalization of rural populations

• Adaptation needs to be brought to the top of the agenda for poverty reduction

– Risks and vulnerabilities need to be included in national planning and integrated into the framework of poverty reduction strategies

Climate change is likely to exacerbate competition for already scarce productive resource – water, land.

Adaptation needs to prevent further marginalization and protect the rights of those not fully integrated into the

market economy and the circuit of international exchanges

The Human Development Report underscores that:• The world has less than a decade to avoid dangerous

climate change that could bring unprecedented human development reversals

• Climate change erodes human potential, freedoms and human rights

• Climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor and future generations, constituencies with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who face the most immediate and most severe human costs

• The Human Development Report 2007/2008 calls for a ‘twin track’ approach that combines stringent mitigation to limit 21st Century warming to less than 2 degree centigrade, with strengthened international cooperation on adaptation

• Winning the battle against climate change will require far-reaching changes in the way we think about ecological interdependence, about social justice and the human rights and entitlements of the poor and future generations

The HDR 2007/2008 is available at

http://hdr.undp.org

Charting a course away dangerous climate change

The sustainable emissions pathway is as follows

– The world – cuts of 50 percent by 2050

– Developed countries – cuts of 80 percent by 2050

– Developing countries – cuts of 20 percent by 2050

with respect to 1990