Reacción a "Reactions to the IPCC synthesis report urging more ambitious action to combat climate change"

The Synthesis Report concludes an enormous effort to examine current knowledge in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its value is integrating knowledge and examining the linkages across impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation options and mitigation.

Some key findings cannot be stressed enough: The anthropogenic origin of climate change is now an undisputed fact. Near half of the world’s population is exposed to life-threatening impacts of climate change, and many have already suffered losses and damages. Climate change impacts are destroying life-supporting ecosystems and biodiversity. Every increment of global warming will exacerbate extremes and reduce humanity’s capacity to adapt because adaptation is facing limits: emissions must stop now. There is a wide range of options that work for adaptation and mitigation, so there is no excuse to start acting at all levels of governance. The main obstacle to action is finance. The gap between what is needed and what is mobilised in adaptation finance is shameful, particularly considering the finding stated in the Summary for Policy Makers that “there is sufficient global capital and liquidity to close global investment gaps.”

Reminding the world of these statements is essential, as they directly affect international negotiations, governmental policy, private sector investment, community organising and ultimately, the mobilisation of every possible effort to adapt to and mitigate climate change.

One of the key messages of the Synthesis Report is, precisely, the need to mobilise every effort from facilitating international cooperation, to implementing and following through governmental regulations, facilitating technological exchange in city and business networks, innovating in finance, and engaging communities that already lead place-based efforts to adapt to and mitigate climate change. There is an emphasis on ‘near-term action,’ that is, rapid and ambitious mitigation and adaptation that requires high upfront investments and may cause disruptive impacts on current societies -the diagram that should be given most attention is Figure 7 of the SPM (Figure 7), which describes many mitigation and adaptation options. Understanding the nature of those actions is a means to palliate disruptive impacts. Experiences in delivering just transition policies, for example, in regions dependent on coal mining, demonstrate that it is possible to put the needs of the vulnerable upfront in work towards delivering a shared low-carbon, climate-resilient future.

The report thus calls for putting climate justice and equity at the centre of climate action. The report emphasises a concept called ‘Climate resilient development.’ Climate resilient development is development that recognises the complex trade-offs between human flourishing, reduction of carbon emissions and the need to adapt to a changing environment. The issue is that climate-resilient development is not one thing, but many things, depending on the many perspectives of different groups within human societies. For that reason, the Summary for Policy Makers explains that “climate-resilient development is advanced when actors work in equitable, just and inclusive ways to reconcile divergent interests, values and worldviews toward equitable and just outcomes.” Reconciliation may not always be possible, but what is always possible is to build solidarities across contexts and across interests and continue listening to each other. We must collectively thank the IPCC for this report that brings diverse perspectives and modes of knowing into the most authoritative account of a world under change.