Another IPCC report? And “only” the Synthesis Report, which summarizes what is already known? Those who believe so should not be mistaken: The comprehensive summary of the 6th IPCC Assessment Report is quite something. Which is why we are reacting quickly with a special Climate.Table issue.
Because the report, which hundreds of experts from science and politics intensively put their heads together for, not only shows just how rapidly the climate crisis is progressing, that it is hitting the poorest and most innocent the hardest and that we actually have to do everything all at once if we want to prevent the worst. But it also shows what is possible and that it is possible: That we have the money but are using it wrongly. That we have the new clean technologies, but cling to the dirty old ones. That we know what needs to be done, but are too lazy to change.
Never before has an IPCC report been so political and relevant. But it has also never been so urgent to act quickly and extensively.
If you enjoy this issue, please forward us. If this mail was forwarded to you: Here you can test the briefing free of charge.
We will be back with a regular Climate.Table on Thursday – and on the same day we will be speaking with Jennifer Morgan, Special Envoy for International Climate Action at the German Foreign Office, about global and German climate policy for 2023 – which will certainly include this IPCC report. Feel free to join us here and spread the word!
The impact of scientific data on climate policy has been hard to measure. But the 6th Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was presented on Monday, will clearly shape global climate policy:
The IPCC 6th Assessment Report (AR6) Synthesis Report summarizes the state of the science that has been developed since August 2021. Hundreds of researchers have evaluated thousands of studies in three working groups (The Physical Science Basis; Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; and Mitigation of Climate Change) since 2015. In addition, the synthesis report summarizes the findings of three IPCC special reports: The 1.5 degree report, the land use and nutrition report, and the oceans and ice regions of the Earth report.
The synthesis report, therefore, does not contain any new facts. It collects and reorganizes the various findings of the working groups. The current report is also clearly more political: It emphasizes the role of global injustice in climate change, mentions neglected and vulnerable groups, gives indications for lifestyle changes, and describes solutions such as renewable energies as economically and health-politically beneficial.
However, the synthesis report hits the hot topic of the climate debate only cautiously: It does not mention an exit from fossil energies in any concrete terms, nor does it mention an end to their subsidies or the role of a CO2 price. The major emerging economies in particular, such as India, China and Saudi Arabia, have been exerting pressure in these areas. And in almost all of the IPCC’s scenarios, gas still plays an important role, at least until 2050.
After all, the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) warns that even the current fossil fuel infrastructure will break the CO2 budget for 1.5 degrees if the trend continues and calls for “substantial reductions in fossil fuel use” for the climate target. This will be invoked by all who call for more climate action.
All governments share these formulations. Representatives of the respective governments sit on the IPCC delegations. Everything that the IPCC decides is therefore not only state of the art but also approved by the nearly 200 governments that work with the IPCC. Oliver Geden, climate expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) and core author of the synthesis report, therefore calls it a “diplomatic document between governments”. It defines “the foundations of the UN negotiations, which are no longer being questioned.”
Nevertheless, it repeatedly leads to bizarre situations when governments agree to positions at the IPCC that torpedo them in political negotiations, such as the UN climate talks. For example, in AR6, the IPCC concluded that “existing and currently planned fossil infrastructure exceed emissions for 1.5 degrees of warming” – but plans to globally phase out fossils regularly fail because of the requirement for unanimity at the UN. Likewise, the IPCC complains that private and public financial flows to fossil fuels are “greater than those for adaptation and mitigation” – but industrialized countries have so far failed to meet their commitment of $100 billion per year in climate finance from 2020.
And even though the report calls for a 43 percent reduction in global greenhouse gases by 2030 to meet the climate target of 1.5 degrees, many governments are balking at the rapid and drastic reduction steps they agree to in the synthesis report.
For Bob Ward, a climate expert at the London School of Economics, the crucial question is whether the AR6’s final synthesis report “contains a strong narrative to guide governments”. For him, that includes a clear statement on a phase-out of fossil fuels. “They are the Lord Voldemort of climate policy: Everyone knows they are the evil, but no one dares name it.” At COP27 in Egypt, for example, a push by India and about 80 other countries – a majority of the plenary – to adopt a “phase down of all fossil fuels” failed.
The synthesis report will be a central part of the world’s first stocktake of climate policy, which will be negotiated and agreed at COP28 in Dubai at the end of the year. The Global Stocktake (GST), enshrined in the Paris Agreement, takes stock of how far countries are collectively in meeting climate targets – and what they still need to do by 2030 to get on a 1.5-degree path. This would require a very specific breakdown of measures for each sector.
The individual IPCC reports support this, for example, when they emphasize the benefits of renewables in the energy transition. The report is “the central resource for decision makers for the Global Stocktake,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. But this also makes the report central to the next round of national climate plans (nationally determined contributions, NDCs) that governments must submit by 2025. These plans, which have been highly inadequate so far, will also be measured against the benchmark of the synthesis report in the future.
For Carl-Friedrich Schleusner, an expert at the think tank Climate Analytics, “the Global Stocktake is, therefore, the litmus test for the Paris Agreement”. In this context, the synthesis report will show “that we have the tools to close the emissions gap before 2030,” but that emissions must fall as quickly as possible by 2025 – and that there is no time left until 2035 to do so.
Danish Climate Minister Dan Jörgensen has similar hopes. “We are far from the right path, currently it amounts to 2.3 to 2.5 degrees of warming. We need a short-term plan for faster reductions by 2030, and I’m confident the IPCC report will show us how.” Time is of the essence, Jörgensen said: Even in Denmark, the “world champion of wind energy,” it takes “seven years to get a wind turbine up and running” – and by then, it is already 2030.
For Li Shuo, climate expert at Greenpeace China, the impact of the synthesis report will be determined by whether it “brings a sense of urgency to international climate policy”. If so, he said, it will depend on whether governments capitalize on that momentum. “The report shows the gap between ambition and reality not only in CO2 reduction but also in finance and in damage and loss. There needs to be a balance there if there is to be progress.”
IPCC reports do indeed have an impact: The AR5 prepared the Paris Agreement. In 2018, the 1.5-degree report turned a rather theoretical target into a marker that has since been accepted worldwide – even if the trend of greenhouse gas emissions, which are far too high for this, has not changed since then.
The opportunity to use the AR6 in the “Global Stocktake” as arguments for decisive action will soon arise: At the UN Interim Conference in Bonn in early June, the technical talks on the GST are to be concluded, after which the “political phase” will begin. So far, however, there has been little interest among political leaders in taking concrete steps, climate insiders complain. The synthesis report should change that, too.
The report also draws attention to the new COP president from Dubai, Sultan Al Jaber. He is currently touring the world to gauge moods and lines of compromise ahead of COP28 in his country. Earlier this week, he was in Copenhagen, where Denmark is gathering representatives from some 40 countries; in early March, he was in Houston for the CERAWeek energy conference; and he is expected soon in China.
The international weather situation is also quite favorable for the IPCC report to have an impact. It is true that the Russian war against Ukraine is paralyzing the G20 and the G7. But just two weeks ago, the UN states surprisingly agreed on a far-reaching treaty to protect the oceans. And already in December, an agreement was reached at the COP15 conference on species protection in Montreal.
Ms Jacob, every IPCC report includes a summary of the most important findings, specially compiled for policymakers. How many politicians actually read and understand these texts?
I believe that the Synthesis Report is widely read and understood. I am always surprised how interest in the IPCC reports has increased in recent years, and I see a great deal of expertise in local governments, private companies and ministries.
Yet emissions have been rising in recent years despite all the IPCC reports. How frustrating is that for you?
I would take a more differentiated view. There is much more attention on climate action today than there was five or ten years ago, and far more people are aware of the need for climate action. That is good, first of all.
But attention alone is not enough. How has the IPCC changed politics?
Without the IPCC, there would be no Paris Climate Agreement. The climate protection pledges of the individual states made during the UN negotiations have become more ambitious. If they are all implemented, global warming could stabilize at 2.3 or 2.5 degrees plus – which is still not what was agreed in the Paris Agreement, but still much better than the 3 or 4 degrees we were heading for in the past. And the promises made by many nations to become carbon-neutral, for example by India, which wants to reach net-zero emissions by 2060, are also a big step forward.
But obviously there is also resistance to more climate action, otherwise, we would have made more progress by now.
Yes, and I think that’s the frustrating thing: Civil society is exerting pressure, business wants investment security for innovations, and governments are far too hesitant to act on this. In Germany, too, parts of the government tend toward grandfathering. That no longer fits the times.
Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the next few years?
I believe that we have a very turbulent decade ahead of us, with conflicts between those who want to speed up climate action and those who do not want any interference and fear losses. As a scientist, I am not surprised by the resistance, but it is frustrating that things are not moving faster.
At the same time, the time we have left to achieve the Paris goals is shrinking.
That was a reason for me to stop being so active in the IPCC. After the 1.5 degrees report, I had gathered so much knowledge that I preferred to focus on implementation. This way I have more time to bring my knowledge and opinions into consultations that support decision-making.
When you say that you see a lot of expertise in municipalities and ministries – how does it manifest itself?
Municipal officials ask me whether they should now reverse decisions they made five or ten years ago that were based on IPCC reports valid at the time. For example, they built a huge rainwater retention basin. Now the IPCC says: Extreme rainfall in their region is very likely to increase. So do they need a new basin, or is the old one sufficient? This is a very typical question and shows that municipalities are increasingly taking a closer look at the contents of the IPCC reports.
And internationally?
Here, it is often a question of what adaptation measures a country can take. At the United Nations, there is a debate on what a national adaptation plan for a country might look like. These discussions not only take into account the summaries from the IPCC reports, but also the underlying scientific work and databases.
Do we even need the IPCC reports anymore for climate action?
Science certainly needs them, because the IPCC reports always show where more research is needed – and if the knowledge gaps are closed, that of course also benefits the climate. For the future, I could imagine dividing the reports: One type of report that focuses on research gaps. And another that analyzes what climate action and climate adaptation needs. One that shows: What would it mean if policymakers decided this way or another? If they build a rainwater retention basin, wet moors, massively remove CO2 from the atmosphere? What impact will massive carbon dioxide removal have on the global climate – and in the place where the plants are built? Could I use it to bring about positive socio-economic consequences in poorer countries, for example?
So a stronger focus on solutions.
Yes, but of course politically unbiased. The IPCC would present different options, analyze their advantages and disadvantages, and thus allow policymakers to make an informed decision, all the way from the global down to the local level. I would like to see that.
What issues would need to be prioritized in the next reporting cycle?
I assume that we will see a lot of research on negative emissions, and that the topic of climate intervention will also come up quite massively – in other words, what used to be called geoengineering.
What impact do you hope the current Synthesis Report will have on politics?
There is this fairly new concept of climate-resilient development. It says: You have to look at the climate, ecosystems and human societies collectively and you can only move them sustainably forward together. That is quite crucial. I hope that the ideal of climate-resilient development – i.e. CO-neutral and socially fair, from the global to the local level – will guide political action in the future.
Meteorologist Daniela Jacob heads the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS). She was coordinating lead author of the IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of 1.5 degrees of Global Warming and one of the lead authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres once again had clear words. “The climate time bomb is ticking. But today’s IPCC report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate time bomb”. Guterres called on the G20 countries to step up their climate action efforts and provide emerging and developing countries with financial and technical resources to keep the 1.5-degree target “alive”. Specifically, he called for a coal phase-out by 2030 for OECD countries and globally by 2040. New oil and gas deposits should no longer be developed.
Madeleine Diouf Sarr, Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, said: “The poor and vulnerable are bearing the brunt of our collective failure to act” on climate change. “It is disappointing that climate finance growth has slowed since 2018,” Sarr said. She urged improving access to funding. “Without stronger mitigation and adaptation, the world is relegating the Least Developed Countries to poverty.” The loss and damage funds need to be in place by the end of the year, she said.
Mohamed Adow, Chair of the NGO Power Shift Africa said: “Africans are experiencing the worst impacts of climate change: floods, storms and droughts like those currently claiming lives in East Africa. It is clear that without swift action, this suffering will increase.” He called the IPCC report a “wake-up call”. Adow called for accelerating the energy transition.
Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, an association of health NGOs and health experts, said the IPCC report shows the urgency of the need for action. Every government must respond to the threat posed by loss and damage to people’s health, she said. Access to clean water, sanitation, clinics and other essentials for health is affected due to climate impacts. She urged governments to respond with adaptation and mitigation measures such as phasing out fossil fuels.
Klaus Röhrig, Head of the Climate Division of CAN Europe, said: The 1.5-degree target is “not a slogan, not a wish list from environmentalists. It is a scientific survival goal”. The European Green Deal is “falling very short”. The outstanding Green Deal legislation on buildings, gas and renewables would have to “aim much higher” so that the Fit-For.55 package would not only achieve a reduction of 55 percent of CO2 emissions, but would be closer to 65 percent.
The EPP’s environmental spokesman in the EU Parliament, Peter Liese (CDU), calls for “massive efforts” on the issue of negative emissions. “We must better promote technologies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But the EU Commission, the Council of Ministers and a majority of the EU Parliament have refused to include this technology in emissions trading,” Liese said. He urged to rectify this as soon as possible, so that a timely CO2 removal on an “industrial scale” would be possible.
At the same time, the MEP criticized that the emission reduction debate should not focus solely on Germany and Europe and instead be more successful at international climate action. Europe’s climate targets are ambitious, but other industrialized countries and many emerging economies fall short of expectations, Liese said. China, in particular, needs to be convinced by a European model for a decarbonized economy.
EU Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans also calls for more ambitious climate targets, especially from industrialized and emerging countries, just like they promised in Glasgow and Sharm el-Sheikh, as well as solid national laws to achieve the targets.
Bas Eickhout (Greens), head of the EU Parliament’s delegation to the COP27, on the other hand, also wants much higher climate targets for Europe. Richer countries would have to achieve net zero much faster – “not in 2050, but in 2040”. Therefore, he calls on the EU Commission to set the goal of carbon neutrality for the continent as early as 2040.
Climate economist Ottmar Edenhofer, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK, said: “The report shows that in certain world regions, a decoupling of CO2 emissions and economic growth is just beginning”. He nevertheless called for swift action “to permanently reduce greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors”. This also requires “carbon dioxide removal technologies whose use is associated with moderate economic costs”. Lili Fuhr, Deputy Director of the Climate and Energy Program of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), on the other hand, called carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removals “technofixes”. They should not be relied upon and risk exceeding climate targets.
Stephen Singer, energy and science expert at Climate Action Network International warned of increasing extreme weather events. “The report warns that what presently is a-one-in-a-century event with regards to storms, sea level rise, flooding will be an annual event in many places unless the world does not cut carbon immediately”. Policymakers must expand solar and wind energy, improve energy efficiency, stop deforestation and change diets.
Oliver Geden, co-author of the IPCC report, said: “We need to start looking seriously at the world beyond 1.5 degrees of temperature increase, because that is where we are heading”. He said it was important to address the questions of what such a temperature rise means for the climate system, for impacts, risks and adaptation. Dealing with a world above 1.5 degrees would not mean becoming paralyzed. With Lukas Scheid
Another IPCC report? And “only” the Synthesis Report, which summarizes what is already known? Those who believe so should not be mistaken: The comprehensive summary of the 6th IPCC Assessment Report is quite something. Which is why we are reacting quickly with a special Climate.Table issue.
Because the report, which hundreds of experts from science and politics intensively put their heads together for, not only shows just how rapidly the climate crisis is progressing, that it is hitting the poorest and most innocent the hardest and that we actually have to do everything all at once if we want to prevent the worst. But it also shows what is possible and that it is possible: That we have the money but are using it wrongly. That we have the new clean technologies, but cling to the dirty old ones. That we know what needs to be done, but are too lazy to change.
Never before has an IPCC report been so political and relevant. But it has also never been so urgent to act quickly and extensively.
If you enjoy this issue, please forward us. If this mail was forwarded to you: Here you can test the briefing free of charge.
We will be back with a regular Climate.Table on Thursday – and on the same day we will be speaking with Jennifer Morgan, Special Envoy for International Climate Action at the German Foreign Office, about global and German climate policy for 2023 – which will certainly include this IPCC report. Feel free to join us here and spread the word!
The impact of scientific data on climate policy has been hard to measure. But the 6th Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was presented on Monday, will clearly shape global climate policy:
The IPCC 6th Assessment Report (AR6) Synthesis Report summarizes the state of the science that has been developed since August 2021. Hundreds of researchers have evaluated thousands of studies in three working groups (The Physical Science Basis; Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; and Mitigation of Climate Change) since 2015. In addition, the synthesis report summarizes the findings of three IPCC special reports: The 1.5 degree report, the land use and nutrition report, and the oceans and ice regions of the Earth report.
The synthesis report, therefore, does not contain any new facts. It collects and reorganizes the various findings of the working groups. The current report is also clearly more political: It emphasizes the role of global injustice in climate change, mentions neglected and vulnerable groups, gives indications for lifestyle changes, and describes solutions such as renewable energies as economically and health-politically beneficial.
However, the synthesis report hits the hot topic of the climate debate only cautiously: It does not mention an exit from fossil energies in any concrete terms, nor does it mention an end to their subsidies or the role of a CO2 price. The major emerging economies in particular, such as India, China and Saudi Arabia, have been exerting pressure in these areas. And in almost all of the IPCC’s scenarios, gas still plays an important role, at least until 2050.
After all, the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) warns that even the current fossil fuel infrastructure will break the CO2 budget for 1.5 degrees if the trend continues and calls for “substantial reductions in fossil fuel use” for the climate target. This will be invoked by all who call for more climate action.
All governments share these formulations. Representatives of the respective governments sit on the IPCC delegations. Everything that the IPCC decides is therefore not only state of the art but also approved by the nearly 200 governments that work with the IPCC. Oliver Geden, climate expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) and core author of the synthesis report, therefore calls it a “diplomatic document between governments”. It defines “the foundations of the UN negotiations, which are no longer being questioned.”
Nevertheless, it repeatedly leads to bizarre situations when governments agree to positions at the IPCC that torpedo them in political negotiations, such as the UN climate talks. For example, in AR6, the IPCC concluded that “existing and currently planned fossil infrastructure exceed emissions for 1.5 degrees of warming” – but plans to globally phase out fossils regularly fail because of the requirement for unanimity at the UN. Likewise, the IPCC complains that private and public financial flows to fossil fuels are “greater than those for adaptation and mitigation” – but industrialized countries have so far failed to meet their commitment of $100 billion per year in climate finance from 2020.
And even though the report calls for a 43 percent reduction in global greenhouse gases by 2030 to meet the climate target of 1.5 degrees, many governments are balking at the rapid and drastic reduction steps they agree to in the synthesis report.
For Bob Ward, a climate expert at the London School of Economics, the crucial question is whether the AR6’s final synthesis report “contains a strong narrative to guide governments”. For him, that includes a clear statement on a phase-out of fossil fuels. “They are the Lord Voldemort of climate policy: Everyone knows they are the evil, but no one dares name it.” At COP27 in Egypt, for example, a push by India and about 80 other countries – a majority of the plenary – to adopt a “phase down of all fossil fuels” failed.
The synthesis report will be a central part of the world’s first stocktake of climate policy, which will be negotiated and agreed at COP28 in Dubai at the end of the year. The Global Stocktake (GST), enshrined in the Paris Agreement, takes stock of how far countries are collectively in meeting climate targets – and what they still need to do by 2030 to get on a 1.5-degree path. This would require a very specific breakdown of measures for each sector.
The individual IPCC reports support this, for example, when they emphasize the benefits of renewables in the energy transition. The report is “the central resource for decision makers for the Global Stocktake,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. But this also makes the report central to the next round of national climate plans (nationally determined contributions, NDCs) that governments must submit by 2025. These plans, which have been highly inadequate so far, will also be measured against the benchmark of the synthesis report in the future.
For Carl-Friedrich Schleusner, an expert at the think tank Climate Analytics, “the Global Stocktake is, therefore, the litmus test for the Paris Agreement”. In this context, the synthesis report will show “that we have the tools to close the emissions gap before 2030,” but that emissions must fall as quickly as possible by 2025 – and that there is no time left until 2035 to do so.
Danish Climate Minister Dan Jörgensen has similar hopes. “We are far from the right path, currently it amounts to 2.3 to 2.5 degrees of warming. We need a short-term plan for faster reductions by 2030, and I’m confident the IPCC report will show us how.” Time is of the essence, Jörgensen said: Even in Denmark, the “world champion of wind energy,” it takes “seven years to get a wind turbine up and running” – and by then, it is already 2030.
For Li Shuo, climate expert at Greenpeace China, the impact of the synthesis report will be determined by whether it “brings a sense of urgency to international climate policy”. If so, he said, it will depend on whether governments capitalize on that momentum. “The report shows the gap between ambition and reality not only in CO2 reduction but also in finance and in damage and loss. There needs to be a balance there if there is to be progress.”
IPCC reports do indeed have an impact: The AR5 prepared the Paris Agreement. In 2018, the 1.5-degree report turned a rather theoretical target into a marker that has since been accepted worldwide – even if the trend of greenhouse gas emissions, which are far too high for this, has not changed since then.
The opportunity to use the AR6 in the “Global Stocktake” as arguments for decisive action will soon arise: At the UN Interim Conference in Bonn in early June, the technical talks on the GST are to be concluded, after which the “political phase” will begin. So far, however, there has been little interest among political leaders in taking concrete steps, climate insiders complain. The synthesis report should change that, too.
The report also draws attention to the new COP president from Dubai, Sultan Al Jaber. He is currently touring the world to gauge moods and lines of compromise ahead of COP28 in his country. Earlier this week, he was in Copenhagen, where Denmark is gathering representatives from some 40 countries; in early March, he was in Houston for the CERAWeek energy conference; and he is expected soon in China.
The international weather situation is also quite favorable for the IPCC report to have an impact. It is true that the Russian war against Ukraine is paralyzing the G20 and the G7. But just two weeks ago, the UN states surprisingly agreed on a far-reaching treaty to protect the oceans. And already in December, an agreement was reached at the COP15 conference on species protection in Montreal.
Ms Jacob, every IPCC report includes a summary of the most important findings, specially compiled for policymakers. How many politicians actually read and understand these texts?
I believe that the Synthesis Report is widely read and understood. I am always surprised how interest in the IPCC reports has increased in recent years, and I see a great deal of expertise in local governments, private companies and ministries.
Yet emissions have been rising in recent years despite all the IPCC reports. How frustrating is that for you?
I would take a more differentiated view. There is much more attention on climate action today than there was five or ten years ago, and far more people are aware of the need for climate action. That is good, first of all.
But attention alone is not enough. How has the IPCC changed politics?
Without the IPCC, there would be no Paris Climate Agreement. The climate protection pledges of the individual states made during the UN negotiations have become more ambitious. If they are all implemented, global warming could stabilize at 2.3 or 2.5 degrees plus – which is still not what was agreed in the Paris Agreement, but still much better than the 3 or 4 degrees we were heading for in the past. And the promises made by many nations to become carbon-neutral, for example by India, which wants to reach net-zero emissions by 2060, are also a big step forward.
But obviously there is also resistance to more climate action, otherwise, we would have made more progress by now.
Yes, and I think that’s the frustrating thing: Civil society is exerting pressure, business wants investment security for innovations, and governments are far too hesitant to act on this. In Germany, too, parts of the government tend toward grandfathering. That no longer fits the times.
Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the next few years?
I believe that we have a very turbulent decade ahead of us, with conflicts between those who want to speed up climate action and those who do not want any interference and fear losses. As a scientist, I am not surprised by the resistance, but it is frustrating that things are not moving faster.
At the same time, the time we have left to achieve the Paris goals is shrinking.
That was a reason for me to stop being so active in the IPCC. After the 1.5 degrees report, I had gathered so much knowledge that I preferred to focus on implementation. This way I have more time to bring my knowledge and opinions into consultations that support decision-making.
When you say that you see a lot of expertise in municipalities and ministries – how does it manifest itself?
Municipal officials ask me whether they should now reverse decisions they made five or ten years ago that were based on IPCC reports valid at the time. For example, they built a huge rainwater retention basin. Now the IPCC says: Extreme rainfall in their region is very likely to increase. So do they need a new basin, or is the old one sufficient? This is a very typical question and shows that municipalities are increasingly taking a closer look at the contents of the IPCC reports.
And internationally?
Here, it is often a question of what adaptation measures a country can take. At the United Nations, there is a debate on what a national adaptation plan for a country might look like. These discussions not only take into account the summaries from the IPCC reports, but also the underlying scientific work and databases.
Do we even need the IPCC reports anymore for climate action?
Science certainly needs them, because the IPCC reports always show where more research is needed – and if the knowledge gaps are closed, that of course also benefits the climate. For the future, I could imagine dividing the reports: One type of report that focuses on research gaps. And another that analyzes what climate action and climate adaptation needs. One that shows: What would it mean if policymakers decided this way or another? If they build a rainwater retention basin, wet moors, massively remove CO2 from the atmosphere? What impact will massive carbon dioxide removal have on the global climate – and in the place where the plants are built? Could I use it to bring about positive socio-economic consequences in poorer countries, for example?
So a stronger focus on solutions.
Yes, but of course politically unbiased. The IPCC would present different options, analyze their advantages and disadvantages, and thus allow policymakers to make an informed decision, all the way from the global down to the local level. I would like to see that.
What issues would need to be prioritized in the next reporting cycle?
I assume that we will see a lot of research on negative emissions, and that the topic of climate intervention will also come up quite massively – in other words, what used to be called geoengineering.
What impact do you hope the current Synthesis Report will have on politics?
There is this fairly new concept of climate-resilient development. It says: You have to look at the climate, ecosystems and human societies collectively and you can only move them sustainably forward together. That is quite crucial. I hope that the ideal of climate-resilient development – i.e. CO-neutral and socially fair, from the global to the local level – will guide political action in the future.
Meteorologist Daniela Jacob heads the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS). She was coordinating lead author of the IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of 1.5 degrees of Global Warming and one of the lead authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres once again had clear words. “The climate time bomb is ticking. But today’s IPCC report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate time bomb”. Guterres called on the G20 countries to step up their climate action efforts and provide emerging and developing countries with financial and technical resources to keep the 1.5-degree target “alive”. Specifically, he called for a coal phase-out by 2030 for OECD countries and globally by 2040. New oil and gas deposits should no longer be developed.
Madeleine Diouf Sarr, Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, said: “The poor and vulnerable are bearing the brunt of our collective failure to act” on climate change. “It is disappointing that climate finance growth has slowed since 2018,” Sarr said. She urged improving access to funding. “Without stronger mitigation and adaptation, the world is relegating the Least Developed Countries to poverty.” The loss and damage funds need to be in place by the end of the year, she said.
Mohamed Adow, Chair of the NGO Power Shift Africa said: “Africans are experiencing the worst impacts of climate change: floods, storms and droughts like those currently claiming lives in East Africa. It is clear that without swift action, this suffering will increase.” He called the IPCC report a “wake-up call”. Adow called for accelerating the energy transition.
Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, an association of health NGOs and health experts, said the IPCC report shows the urgency of the need for action. Every government must respond to the threat posed by loss and damage to people’s health, she said. Access to clean water, sanitation, clinics and other essentials for health is affected due to climate impacts. She urged governments to respond with adaptation and mitigation measures such as phasing out fossil fuels.
Klaus Röhrig, Head of the Climate Division of CAN Europe, said: The 1.5-degree target is “not a slogan, not a wish list from environmentalists. It is a scientific survival goal”. The European Green Deal is “falling very short”. The outstanding Green Deal legislation on buildings, gas and renewables would have to “aim much higher” so that the Fit-For.55 package would not only achieve a reduction of 55 percent of CO2 emissions, but would be closer to 65 percent.
The EPP’s environmental spokesman in the EU Parliament, Peter Liese (CDU), calls for “massive efforts” on the issue of negative emissions. “We must better promote technologies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But the EU Commission, the Council of Ministers and a majority of the EU Parliament have refused to include this technology in emissions trading,” Liese said. He urged to rectify this as soon as possible, so that a timely CO2 removal on an “industrial scale” would be possible.
At the same time, the MEP criticized that the emission reduction debate should not focus solely on Germany and Europe and instead be more successful at international climate action. Europe’s climate targets are ambitious, but other industrialized countries and many emerging economies fall short of expectations, Liese said. China, in particular, needs to be convinced by a European model for a decarbonized economy.
EU Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans also calls for more ambitious climate targets, especially from industrialized and emerging countries, just like they promised in Glasgow and Sharm el-Sheikh, as well as solid national laws to achieve the targets.
Bas Eickhout (Greens), head of the EU Parliament’s delegation to the COP27, on the other hand, also wants much higher climate targets for Europe. Richer countries would have to achieve net zero much faster – “not in 2050, but in 2040”. Therefore, he calls on the EU Commission to set the goal of carbon neutrality for the continent as early as 2040.
Climate economist Ottmar Edenhofer, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK, said: “The report shows that in certain world regions, a decoupling of CO2 emissions and economic growth is just beginning”. He nevertheless called for swift action “to permanently reduce greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors”. This also requires “carbon dioxide removal technologies whose use is associated with moderate economic costs”. Lili Fuhr, Deputy Director of the Climate and Energy Program of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), on the other hand, called carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removals “technofixes”. They should not be relied upon and risk exceeding climate targets.
Stephen Singer, energy and science expert at Climate Action Network International warned of increasing extreme weather events. “The report warns that what presently is a-one-in-a-century event with regards to storms, sea level rise, flooding will be an annual event in many places unless the world does not cut carbon immediately”. Policymakers must expand solar and wind energy, improve energy efficiency, stop deforestation and change diets.
Oliver Geden, co-author of the IPCC report, said: “We need to start looking seriously at the world beyond 1.5 degrees of temperature increase, because that is where we are heading”. He said it was important to address the questions of what such a temperature rise means for the climate system, for impacts, risks and adaptation. Dealing with a world above 1.5 degrees would not mean becoming paralyzed. With Lukas Scheid
