The climate crisis is a "timebomb"
that is ticking, United Nations Secretary General Guterres said
on Monday after the release to the final part of the sixth
assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), which highlighted how Italy is among the
countries that are highly vulnerable.
The report said over a century of burning fossil fuels and
unequal and unsustainable energy and land use have led to global
warming of 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels.
This has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme
weather events and higher risks for human health and ecosystems.
In every region of the world, people are dying from extreme heat
and climate-driven food and water insecurity is expected to
increase with increased warming, the report said.
It said the pace and scale of what has been done so far, and
current plans, are insufficient to limit warming to key
threshold of 1.5°C, beyond which damage to the climate will
become irreversible.
"Almost half of the world's population lives in regions that are
highly vulnerable to climate change," said Aditi Mukherji, one
of the 93 authors of this Synthesis Report, the closing chapter
of the Panel's sixth assessment.
"In the last decade, deaths from floods, droughts and storms
were 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions".
Piero Lionello, an author of the section on Europe and the
Mediterranean, highlighted the alarming situation Italy faces.
He said it was subject to the typical risks of the European side
of the Mediterranean, some down to climate change itself and
others linked to the especially vulnerable nature of the
ecosystems and production systems.
These concern reductions in precipitation levels and the impact
of this on water supplies, the vulnerability of coastal areas,
the importance of the tourism sector and the threats to land and
marine ecosystems posed by pollution and over-exploitation.
But the report also said that there are multiple, feasible and
effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt
to human-caused climate change, and they are available now.
It said emissions should be decreasing by now and will need to
be cut by almost half by 2030, if warming is to be limited to
1.5°C.
"The climate timebomb is ticking," said Guterres.
"But today's report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate
timebomb.
"It is a survival guide for humanity. As it shows, the 1.5C
limit is achievable."
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