In full acceleration of global warming, the boss of the UN climate experts (IPCC) launched, Monday, February 14, the process of adopting a new reference report on its devastating impacts.  

After more than a century and a half of economic development devoting fossil fuels, the world has gained approximately +1.1°C compared to the pre-industrial era, already multiplying heat waves, droughts, storms or devastating floods. 

In the first part of their report published last August, UN climate experts estimated that the mercury would reach around 2030 - ten years earlier than expected - the threshold of +1.5°C, the most ambition of the Paris agreement. 

Before a third opus in April on solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the second, whose negotiations begin on Monday, looks at the impacts of global warming and how to prepare for it. 

It must decline these consequences on all continents and in all their aspects: health, food security, water shortage, displacement of populations, destruction of ecosystems... 

“The needs (for this report) have never been greater, because the stakes have never been higher,” IPCC President Hoesung Lee said in a brief online session opening two weeks. negotiations behind closed doors. 

About "4.5 billion people on this planet have suffered a disaster related to a weather event in the past 20 years," added the head of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, pointing to the fossil fuels that have " boosted" the atmosphere by reinforcing the greenhouse effect. 

A preliminary version of the report, which AFP obtained last June, showed that life as we know it would inevitably be transformed, in the short term. 

On almost every continent, the world is already seeing disasters unfolding with their own eyes.

Like last year with the flames ravaging the American West, Greece or Turkey, floods submerging regions of Germany or China, or a thermometer that comes close to 50°C in Canada.  

Focus on “adaptive” solutions   

And "we know (...) that the growth of climate impacts far exceeds our efforts to adapt to it", insisted, Monday, the boss of the UN-Environment, Inger Andersen, qualifying this new report as " capital to help global decision-makers design responses to climate impacts".  

Faced with the litany of disasters and the need to reduce emissions by almost 50% by 2030 to not exceed +1.5°C, the world promised, at COP26 in Glasgow in November, accelerate the fight against global warming and finance more adaptation measures.   

"Not enough" to ward off "the climate catastrophe that is always knocking at the door", reacted the secretary general of the UN, Antonio Guterres.   

As states are called upon to step up their ambition by COP27 in Egypt at the end of 2022, “I hope this report will be a good kick where I think for some,” said Friday at the AFP, the American envoy for the climate, John Kerry.    

It "will more strongly integrate economic and social sciences, and it will provide decision-makers with data and knowledge to help them develop policies and make decisions", also hoped, Monday, Hoesung Lee.  

This new assessment of the IPCC will be unveiled on February 28, after two weeks of virtual meeting of the 195 Member States who will sift, line by line, the "summary for decision-makers", a politically sensitive digest of thousands of pages of the scientific report.   

Evolution compared to the previous report of seven years ago, the attention paid to "adaptation", that is to say the solutions to deal with the impacts of climate change.

It "is not just a shopping list of what could be done, but also an assessment of the effectiveness and feasibility" of the measures, explained last week Debra Roberts, co-chair of the group of 270 scientists. having prepared this report.   

But "there are limits to adaptation," said climatologist Laurent Bopp, one of the authors of the report, to AFP, referring to the risks of significant population migrations.  

"In some areas, if the temperatures exceed very high levels, human life is no longer possible. If in some coastal areas the sea level rises by more than one meter, protection with dikes is no longer possible. not possible either". 

With AFP 

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