Following the release on Monday, March 20 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the Synthesis Report of its Sixth Assessment Cycle, the focal point of media attention has been the ‘last warning’ to cut emissions in order to meet the 1.5˚C global warming stretch goal of the Paris Agreement. Anything short of mass mobilization to adapt to inevitable near- and middle-term climate impacts is tantamount to willful denial.

Andrew

When many people think about climate adaptation, their first reaction is something akin to, "That's a worthy goal, but let's focus on mitigation. Adaptation and resilience are our backup plan for 2050 if we come up a little bit short. But we're resourceful and we'll hit those UN climate targets. Now let's focus on the urgent stuff."
Following the release on Monday, March 20 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/">the Synthesis Report of its Sixth Assessment Cycle</a>, the focal point of media attention has been the &lsquo;last warning&rsquo; to cut emissions in order to meet the 1.5˚C global warming stretch goal of the Paris Agreement. This common reaction is understandable and true to form for policymakers and journalists but misses the main points.
<img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/2cd3a91dab814cf9bad251b1cea64085787e54d2.png" alt="Figure 1. &ldquo;Adverse Impacts from Human-Caused Climate Change Will Continue to Intensify.&rdquo; Source: https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf." />
What are the main points? Many argue, including the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/press/IPCC_AR6_SYR_PressRelease_en.pdf">IPCC&rsquo;s own press release</a>, that we need to focus on the &ldquo;narrowing window&rdquo; for action to stay within 1.5˚C (2.7˚F) warming. We must keep hope alive and focus on cutting emissions steeply and fast. Of course, this is essential &ndash; but, in the clear-eyed <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-un-issues-a-final-warning-on-the-climate-and-a-plan">words of The New Yorker&rsquo;s Elizabeth Kolbert</a>, &ldquo;[T]o imagine at this point that the latest warning from the I.P.C.C. will spur action, when so many previous ones have failed to, requires not just hope but, it would seem, something close to delusion.&rdquo;
The real main points, for those willing to swallow bitter pills, are as follows. First, the IPCC summary report&rsquo;s first pages state bluntly,
<blockquote>&ldquo;Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people. Vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected.&rdquo;</blockquote>
In short, the impacts are here, they are serious, and they are unrelenting, particularly for the world&rsquo;s poor and disenfranchised.
Second, human society is not adequately adapting.
<blockquote>&ldquo;Despite progress, adaptation gaps exist, and will continue to grow at current rates of implementation. Hard and soft limits to adaptation have been reached in some ecosystems and regions.&rdquo;</blockquote>
Third, the warming is nowhere near stopping.
<blockquote>&ldquo;Continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming, with the best estimate of reaching 1.5&deg;C in the near term in considered scenarios and modelled pathways.&rdquo;</blockquote>
By &lsquo;near term&rsquo;, the IPCC means within ten years, not the world of our great-grandchildren.
And yet, breathless media coverage still manages to downplay or ignore the need for urgent adaptation. Remarkably &ndash; but not out of step with coverage in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/climate/global-warming-ipcc.html">The New York Times</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/time-is-running-out-to-curb-global-warming-u-n-panel-report-says-83205040">The Wall Street Journal</a> &ndash; The Guardian&rsquo;s article on the latest IPCC report, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/21/methane-to-food-waste-eight-ways-to-attempt-to-stay-within-15c">highlighting the eight most urgent actions to take on climate change</a>, includes none focused on adaptation. Instead, there is the suggestion that the 1.5˚C threshold could be preserved with urgent action. And The Washington Post, in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/03/20/climate-change-ipcc-report-15/">first sentence of its article on the report</a>, falsely suggests that Earth might not cross the 1.5˚C threshold within 10 years if &ldquo;nations drastically transform their economies and immediately transition away from fossil fuels.&rdquo;
The flaws here are manifold. To start, we face rapid warming today, pushing us up to and past the 1.5˚C threshold in the coming years &ndash; regardless of what achievements in urgent decarbonization we achieve (the 1.5˚C accomplishment of urgent decarbonization would be achieved by the year 2100, after an &ldquo;overshoot&rdquo;). The inescapable result will be myriad devastating climate shocks, not to mention the unpredictable social, political, economic, and financial fallout thereof. Consequently, climate adaptation and resilience are about as urgent as it gets on the planetary scale &ndash; as urgent and existential as the mitigation challenge to rein in future emissions.
Anything short of mass mobilization to adapt to inevitable near- and middle-term climate impacts is tantamount to willful denial. <a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-02-degree-goal-plausible-social-important.html">A well-regarded study</a>&nbsp;released last month concluded that 1.5˚C is now out of reach. A new AI-driven <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/2023/01/30/ai-predicts-global-warming-will-exceed-1-5-degrees-2030s/">analysis published in January largely concurred</a>. We are already seeing practically unmanageable catastrophic impacts such as unprecedented heat waves and drought in Europe and the Pacific Northwest, epic floods in Pakistan and Germany, terrifyingly powerful storms in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, and immense wildfires across the American West, Southern Europe, Siberia, and Australia.
These impacts are striking at today&rsquo;s level of only about 1.2˚C of warming, which is, of course, merely a global&nbsp;average.
In many places, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-arctic-is-warming-nearly-four-times-faster-than-the-rest-of-the-world#:~:text=A%20new%20study%20shows%20that,over%20the%20past%2043%20years.">such as the Arctic</a>, the warming is already substantially greater, and coming at us faster than ever: the IPCC indicates we are <a href="https://theconversation.com/ipcc-says-earth-will-reach-temperature-rise-of-about-1-5-in-around-a-decade-but-limiting-any-global-warming-is-what-matters-most-165397#:~:text=The%20latest%20IPCC%20findings%20confirm%20Earth,on%20the%20decisions%20we%20make%20today.&amp;text=The%20latest%20IPCC%20findings,decisions%20we%20make%20today.&amp;text=IPCC%20findings%20confirm%20Earth,on%20the%20decisions%20we">on a path to exceeding 1.5˚C by the early 2030s</a>. On top of that,&nbsp;we will likely exceed that threshold temporarily as early as this year <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/el-nino-2023-heatwaves-climate-crisis_uk_63c696d4e4b0ae9de1cb1fed#:~:text=El%20Nino%20is%20set%20to%20return%20later%20in,Europe%20heatwaves%20and%20floods%20in%20Pakistan%20and%20Nigeria.">thanks to the warming cycle of the emerging El Ni&ntilde;o</a>. The cyclical impacts are already here, and <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23032022/el-nino-hemispheres/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20strongest%20El%20Ni%C3%B1os%20on%20record,Ni%C3%B1a%20cycle%20would%20become%20apparent%20after%20about%202050.">getting stronger and weirder than ever</a>. We are likewise at risk of <a href="https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/output/infodesk/tipping-elements">triggering a series of irreversible tipping points in our natural systems</a>, such as glacier and permafrost melt, sea level rise, and ecosystem collapse,&nbsp;requiring adaptation and resilience&nbsp;at a much greater scale and more urgent pace than envisioned by many casual observers.
<img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/8231e07be36eb70930284fc0a4069df87756028c.png" alt="Figure 2. &ldquo;There is a Rapidly Narrowing Window of Opportunity to Enable Climate-Resilient Development.&rdquo; https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/figures/summary-for-policymakers/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM_Figure6.png." />
What can countries, communities, and organizations do to protect themselves? The first order of business is to take a comprehensive and sober look at the near-term climate threats and assess their risk exposures under a series of plausible scenarios, focused on the near term as well as the long term. These scenarios should consider not only chronic physical risks such as rising temperatures, precipitation change, and sea level rise on the time scales of 2050 and beyond, as is common in the climate policy discourse, but also potential near-term extreme weather events, ecological tipping points, and the impacts of complex interactions of social, political, and economic systems, which are <a href="https://media.licdn.com/dms/document/C4E1FAQFbByCRksCaMQ/feedshare-document-pdf-analyzed/0/1678986469208?e=1680134400&amp;v=beta&amp;t=df0gVorkzXVmMNTNexTzglDNJo5r6vfx7TX2dQmLdEA">often neglected in climate projections and models</a>. The IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report and <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/working-group/wg2/">other associated reports</a> are a great place to begin to consider likely climate-driven adverse effects. There is <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360132323002536">a robust literature</a> and <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/climate-adaptation">rapidly-expanding corpus of practice</a> for effective adaptation and resilience. However, <a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/adaptation-gap-report-2022">investment in adaptation and resilience is lagging badly</a>, while the <a href="https://climatepolicyinfohub.eu/climate-change-adaptation-needs-barriers-and-limits.html">capacity for adaptation is limited</a> and requires dramatic improvement. Similarly, risk management and preparedness for climate-related hazards <a href="https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/06312649-6eb1-41a2-a49e-069be7790727">remain inadequate</a>.
A major psychological and cultural barrier to climate adaptation is the misconception that accepting adaptation means giving in to pessimism or declaring defeat. This couldn&rsquo;t be further from the truth: proactive adaptation is about optimizing for human thriving in the face of limited resources and environmental constraints, just as mankind has done with aplomb and ingenuity since time immemorial.
So what are we waiting for? We don&rsquo;t need to give up on reducing emissions to pick up the gauntlet for adaptation. We are long past the luxury of choosing one or the other. It&rsquo;s time to get cracking.
illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability &amp; Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
<h6 style="text-align: justify;">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/fr/@mattpalmer?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Matt Palmer</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/kbTp7dBzHyY?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>​</h6>

Why the IPCC’s Latest Report Should Spur a Rush to Adapt

In the World Economic Forum's 2023 annual risk report, released earlier this month, the seminal message was unmistakable: Watch out for climate-related disasters over the next decade. WEF notes that these crises are likely to feed on each other and cascade, confounding expectations of a slow, gradual slide towards climate impacts in the decades ahead.

In the World Economic Forum&#x27;s <a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-risks-report-2023">2023 annual risk report</a>, released earlier this month, the seminal message was unmistakable: Watch out for climate-related disasters over the next decade, particularly in the context of the multi-headed hydra of &quot;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f6c4f63c-aa71-46f0-a0a7-c2a4c4a3c0f1">polycrisis</a>&quot;. The WEF report, based upon a global survey, “see[s] the <a href="https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risks_Report_2023.pdf">path to 2025 dominated by social and environmental risks</a>,” and the 10-year time frame is even worse: “the longer-term global risks landscape is also dominated by deteriorating environmental risks”, particularly those related to climate change. In case you aren’t sweating bullets yet, WEF notes that these crises are likely to feed on each other and cascade, confounding expectations of a slow, gradual slide towards climate impacts in the decades ahead.
For a certain constituency, this is old news. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/about/history/">sounding the alarm on climate change impacts for decades</a>, punctuated by a <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/resources/spm-headline-statements/">particularly alarming Working Group II report from AR6</a> (the sixth assessment report) in February 2022. <a href="https://www.sunrisemovement.org/about/">Youth movements</a>, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/elections-international-news-environment-berlin-ap-top-news-5a8b8e7b31d9496097ac0f5301ffeb8d">green political parties</a>, and <a href="https://www.climateaction100.org/">advocacy groups</a> the world over have made climate change a mainstream political and business issue. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, to his credit, has been imploring the world to take more urgent action in increasingly stark terms, recently asserting that we are on the &quot;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/07/were-on-a-highway-to-climate-hell-un-chief-guterres-says.html">highway to climate hell</a>&quot;. And the <a href="https://www.fsb-tcfd.org/">Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures</a> (TCFD), an industry-led group building consensus on communicating how climate change impacts business, has <a href="https://assets.bbhub.io/company/sites/60/2022/10/2022-TCFD-Status-Report.pdf">now firmly embedded climate risk in widely-adopted voluntary and compulsory financial disclosure regimes</a>, reinforcing that it is a material risk to investors.
But most of the world is not acting as if we are on the brink of calamitous climate impacts. For one, there are <a href="https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/">hardly any countries</a> where governments have committed to decarbonization at the rate and scale necessary even to meet the Paris Agreement targets of 2025, <a href="https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/40875/EGR2022_KR.pdf?sequence=3">let alone 2030 or 2050</a>. Many corporates and financial institutions <a href="https://www.gfanzero.com/">have committed to Net Zero</a> greenhouse gas emissions, but <a href="https://www.esgtoday.com/vanguard-drops-out-of-net-zero-asset-managers-initiative/">some are backpedaling</a>, many <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2023/01/report-reveals-gfanz-members-provide-hundreds-billions-finance-fossil-fuel">are still robustly funding fossil fuels</a>, and <a href="https://netzeroprofessional.com/net-zero-transition-plans-are-low-priority-for-organisations/">few have put forward credible transition plans</a> – leading to <a href="https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/high-levelexpertgroupupdate7.pdf">the creation of a high-level UN expert group to fix the problem</a>. And according to calculations by many experts, <a href="https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-a-decade-of-data/">investment in climate adaptation is at miniscule levels</a>.
Also concerning are the influential voices questioning whether a focus on climate risk is well-placed. In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and extreme market turbulence last spring, Stuart Kirk, then-head of sustainable investing for HSBC, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfNamRmje-s">memorably questioned the urgency and importance of addressing climate risk</a>. Today, Republican elected officials across the U.S. are <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-17/blackrock-s-fink-says-esg-narrative-has-become-ugly-personal?sref=h5EZFUoq">seeking to rein in and reverse efforts to embed ESG principles</a> in investing and business practices, much of which is centered around climate action. Whether these efforts and arguments are advanced in good faith is widely debated, but the dismissal of urgent warnings of catastrophe is full-throated and sincere.
In this context of inaction and insouciance, it is clarifying to see that the World Economic Forum&#x27;s survey of 12,000 public and private sector leaders across the globe clearly ranks climate- and environment-linked crises as among their primary concerns for the two-year time horizon to 2025. And these &quot;green&quot; risks sweep the top four ranked places for the ten-year time horizon to 2033 and take six of the top ten [see graphic below].
<img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/1c89a41c6cfda6e9c3dcd948ac956d826ca15084.webp" alt="Figure 1. World Economic Forum, 2023. "WEF Global Risks Report 2023." https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risks_Report_2023.pdf.">
These risks, which splash green across the infographics in the report, are rightfully catalogued together, as they are all reflective of related causes and consequences of our poor stewardship of the natural world and its resources. WEF notes that even those without ‘climate’ in the name are part of the same complex: to wit, “Nature loss and climate change are intrinsically interlinked – a failure in one sphere will cascade into the other”.
Even the ‘non-green’ risks bear the fingerprints of climate change: “Large-scale involuntary migration”, “Erosion of social cohesion and societal polarization”, and “Geoeconomic confrontation” nearly round out the top 10 decade-scale risks… and all represent predicted consequences of climate stress and collapse.
Compounding the perceived risk of the onset of environmental disasters is a lack of preparedness. WEF experts surveyed “assessed existing measures to prevent or prepare for” these environmental calamities to be “ineffective or highly ineffective.”
Perhaps even more edifying than the top-line messages in the WEF report is the analysis on managing these environmental risks that&#x27;s buried deep in the document. The “Resource Rivalries” section and conclusion sections emphasize the need for readiness, resilience, and adaptability in the face of uncertain but possible and even likely cascading crises. Mapped across dimensions of geoeconomic confrontation/cooperation and slow/fast climate action, the report emphasizes the range of future outcomes that climate change may help precipitate. <a href="https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risks_Report_2023.pdf">WEF concludes</a>, &quot;Lack of preparedness for longer-term risks will destabilize the global risks landscape further.... A rigorous approach to foresight and preparedness is called for.&quot;
After the seemingly unending recent series of &quot;black swan&quot; events and &quot;unforeseeable&quot; crises – the Great Recession, the Trump/Brexit populist backlash, COVID-19, global megadrought, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to name the most prominent – as a species, we remain woefully unready for acute, near-term climate-related crises. This short-termism and myopia permeate society deep and wide. Even the experts running scenario analysis at the <a href="https://www.ngfs.net/ngfs-scenarios-portal/">Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System</a> (NGFS) are <a href="https://www.ngfs.net/sites/default/files/medias/documents/ngfs_climate_scenarios_for_central_banks_and_supervisors_.pdf.pdf">focused squarely on long-term physical and transition risks circa 2050</a> and beyond, not near-term acute crises right in front of our noses.
Let&#x27;s hope the latest WEF report, though itself only the latest installment in an annual drumbeat, helps jar the world out of its complacency and into recognition of, and action on, the urgent imperative of climate crisis readiness.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability &amp; Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

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Andrew Eil

Andrew Eil

Why the IPCC’s Latest Report Should Spur a Rush to Adapt

WEF 2023 Risk Report: Climate disasters are coming if we don't act now

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