The Giec publishes this Monday the second part of its assessment report, to be seen as the synthesis, at the moment T, from tens of thousands of studies, of the state of scientific knowledge on climate change.
This time around, he looked at the impacts of climate change and how to prepare for it.
If the IPCC says it observes "progress in the planning and implementation of adaptation", Wolfgang Cramer, one of the authors, underlines the efforts that remain to be made and recalls that adaptation will not be everything .
Droughts, floods, heat waves, fires, food insecurity, water shortages, diseases, rising waters... From 3.3 to 3.6 billion people on Earth are already "very vulnerable" to the impacts of climate change, alert on Monday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) .
While his new report emphasizes even more the need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, he also invites us to concern ourselves with adaptations to the already real and future impacts of climate change.
With good news, however, pointed out by Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the UN: “investment in adaptation to climate change works.
Adaptation saves lives”.
Wolfgang Cramer, research director (CNRS) at the Mediterranean Institute of Biodiversity and Marine and Continental Ecology (IMBE), and one of the authors of the report, answers questions from
20 Minutes
.
Is this the first IPCC report to recall with such insistence the impacts of climate change and the need to prepare to deal with it?
No, previous IPCC publications already addressed this issue of adaptation.
The novelty of this report is to have emphasized two aspects.
On the one hand, it highlights the various possible adaptation options and highlights the most interesting cases.
On the other hand, he insists on the limits of adaptation, which cannot prevent all loss and damage.
This is the case in the protection of the coasts [where 60% of the population live today].
In some territories, the expected sea level rise is such that no adaptation solution will be able to counter it.
The only option will be to move the populations.
We are already sometimes at these extreme solutions.
In Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, the dykes are no longer sufficient to deal with the rising seas and neighborhoods are already being abandoned [in mid-January, Parliament voted to transfer the capital to the island of Borneo to escape pollution and rising waters].
Other cities are just as vulnerable to rising sea and ocean levels, particularly around the Mediterranean.
This is the case of Alexandria [second largest city in Egypt].
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The IPCC observes “progress in the planning and implementation of adaptation (…) in all sectors and regions”… What is this progress?
People are not stupid, they protect themselves against the threats of climatic hazards.
So much so that today, everywhere, there are concrete cases of adaptation to climate change.
Among these, there are interesting options that can be highlighted.
Agroecology is one of them.
In many regions, this model of agricultural production [which relies as much as possible on the functionalities offered by natural ecosystems and seeks to reduce pressures on the environment as much as possible] is today considered to be an important avenue for adaptation.
Cities too, the big ones in particular, are taking up this issue.
These are territories in constant transformation and which have, as such, the opportunity to move towards greater resilience, to be laboratories of transformation.
Many are thus rethinking the management of their green spaces and the place they give to nature, in particular to better withstand heat waves in the future.
Many are also working on better absorption of rainwater by waterproofing the soil to deal with the risk of flooding.
This new IPCC report cites many examples of inspiring adaptation measures, particularly in seaside towns.
Do we now have all the tools and all the knowledge to set up effective adaptation policies?
Many skills have been acquired in the field of adaptation and deserve to be deployed on a larger scale.
But we must be careful not to fall into an overly simplistic vision, considering that technological solutions will suffice to adapt to climate change.
On the contrary, our report emphasizes that adaptation policies that only take into account the technological aspect, while neglecting the societal and economic aspects, are ineffective.
Clearly: adaptation must also be concerned with climate justice, ensuring that all components of a population can have the means to cope with climatic hazards.
Is it in this sense that the IPCC also speaks, in this report, of cases of “poor adaptations”?
Absolutely.
Simply installing air conditioning systems in homes and offices in a city is an example of poor adaptation.
Not only do these air conditioners contribute to warming the outside air a little more, but above all, the disadvantaged populations, those who do not necessarily have the means to buy such equipment, will remain unprotected.
Another example is the concrete dykes erected to protect against rising waters.
These books may make sense in some cases, but in others they are poorly designed and ineffective.
They can then give this misleading feeling, to the populations who live behind, that they are sheltered from climatic hazards and that they can continue to develop without worrying about adaptation.
That's what happened with Katrina in the summer of 2005,
in the USA.
The hurricane caused flooding that quickly overwhelmed the levee system that was supposed to protect New Orleans [built below sea level and surrounded by lakes].
Still in this report, the IPCC points out the important stage that remains to be crossed between the current levels of adaptation and those which should be reached… How to explain it?
Even if we point to undeniable progress, there is still a cruel lack of adaptation almost everywhere in the world.
The reasons are various.
There are those bad adaptations that we just talked about.
Sometimes, in certain territories or economic sectors, adaptation is simply still not taken into account.
Even in countries like France, where we can generally consider that there is this awareness, the means (financial, regulatory, citizen participation, etc.) are not yet mobilized to meet the challenges.
Should we go so far as to prioritize adaptation actions (to the current and future consequences of climate change) over mitigation actions (reduction of climate change)?
This is a question that comes up often.
But the answer is firm, we cannot choose: these two issues must be tackled head-on.
The limits of adaptation will be even greater if we no longer seek to reduce as much as possible the reduction of our greenhouse gases at the same time.
The first part of the IPCC's sixth assessment report [published in August and devoted to the scientific aspects of climate change] clearly showed that a warming trajectory of +4°C would lead to a much higher sea level rise than expected in a world at +1.5°C.
Behind, the adaptation efforts to be put in place are not at all the same.
A positive point of this report is to show that in many cases, the adaptation measures to be implemented also contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
This is the case of agroecology, which not only makes it possible to adapt to global warming, but also generates fewer greenhouse gases than intensive agricultural production models.
Planet
Climate change: "Between 3.3 and 3.6 billion people live in a very vulnerable environment", warns the IPCC
Planet
Climate change: Why is adaptation, at the heart of the new IPCC report, far from an option?
Global warming
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