Climate change driving humanitarian crises: IPCC

Societies are already reeling from the impacts of climate change, which will worsen if action to deal with the crisis is not immediately taken, the United Nations' top climate science body warned yesterday in a major report.

Rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and extreme weather events have cascading impacts on human society, said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), pointing to food and water shortages, and the loss of lives, infrastructure and biodiversity.

"The extent and magnitude of climate change impacts are larger than estimated in previous assessments," said the IPCC.

"They are causing severe and widespread disruption in nature and in society - reducing our ability to grow nutritious food or provide enough clean drinking water, thus affecting people's health and well-being and damaging livelihoods."

IPCC chair Hoesung Lee said the latest report - the second of three that will collectively make up the IPCC's sixth assessment report (AR6) - is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction.

He said: "Climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our well-being and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks."

Broadly speaking, there are two key prongs of climate action.

Mitigation refers to efforts to reduce emissions, such as switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy, while adaptation is geared at helping communities cope with impacts, like building sea walls to keep out rising sea levels.

But the latest IPCC report - which involved more than 200 authors from different countries, including Singapore - noted that progress on adaptation is uneven.

There are gaps between action taken and what is needed to deal with the increasing risks, and these gaps are largest among lower-income populations, it said.

The latest report builds on the first of the AR6 reports which was released last August. That report had focused on indicators of the climate crisis, such as temperatures and rate of sea-level increase.

The latest one highlights the implications of these indicators on societies.

For example, it found that increasing heat and extreme weather are driving wildlife towards the poles, higher latitudes or deeper ocean waters.

This has repercussions on food security for many communities.

For instance, the IPCC noted that many Pacific island countries could see their maximum fish catch potential drop by at least 50 per cent by 2100 compared with the period from 1980 to 2000, even if the world makes drastic cuts in the amount of emissions released.

Changes in temperature, rainfall, and extreme weather have also increased the frequency and spread of diseases in wildlife, agriculture and people.

In Asia, the report highlighted how increased frequency of hazards such as heatwaves, floods or drought could increase vector-borne and water-borne diseases, undernutrition, mental disorders and allergic diseases.

Despite the dire outlook, however, the report said mankind can still reduce the magnitude of climate impacts on societies by harnessing nature.

IPCC Working Group 2 co-chairman Hans-Otto Portner said healthy ecosystems are more resilient to climate change and provide life-critical services such as food and clean water.

"By restoring degraded ecosystems and effectively and equitably conserving 30 to 50 per cent of earth's land, freshwater and ocean habitats, society can benefit from nature's capacity to absorb and store carbon, and we can accelerate progress towards sustainable development," he said.

Secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Jagan Chapagain said the IPCC report confirms what aid organisations have already been witnessing for years.

"Climate change is already disrupting the lives of billions, particularly the world's poorest who have contributed the least to it," he said.

"The global response to Covid-19 proves that governments can act decisively and drastically in the face of imminent global threats - we need the same energy and action to combat climate change now."