BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — The executive director of the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), Dr Colin Young, says the consequence for Caribbean countries will be “very dire” if the delegates to an international conference in Glasgow later this year fail to respond positively to the sixth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC’ s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) has been released ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow from October 31 to November 12 this year and will bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The CCCCC is tasked with coordinating the Caribbean region’s response to climate change.
Young said that the Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders have set out three COP26 headline outcomes for ambition.
He said these include major economies closing the mitigation gap to keep 1.5°C within reach and that they present 2030 emission reduction targets that respond to the science to maintain global warming below 1.5° C and commitments to reach net zero by 2050.
The regional leaders are also urging developed countries and other financial actors to match finance flows with small island developing states (SIDS) needs especially on adaptation and loss and damage.
He said the regional countries are also hoping that the developed countries will announce commitments to scale up climate finance, achieving a floor of US$100 billion per annum well before the next climate finance goal is agreed, with special attention to adaptation finance and loss and damage and with prioritisation of access for vulnerable countries, in particular, small island developing states.
In addition, the Caricom leaders say parties must complete the Paris Rulebook on markets, transparency and common timeframes, noting that such completion strengthens accountability and enables ambition, and preserves key principles of transparency and environmental integrity.
“I think the consequences will be very dire. I think what the IPCC report illuminated quite clearly is that we have a very small window to which the world has to act and every time we delay and we kick the can down the road we are actually making subsequent actions to keep global temperatures lower than 1.5 degrees, more difficult, more ambitious and more expensive,” Young said.
Young, responding to a question from the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) about the consequences for small island developing states like those in the Caribbean if the report does not find favour with the Glasgow conference, warned that what “we are already seeing is the frequency and severity of these climate related hazards are increasing”.
“So while the world talks and while we may delay, what we have seen and what we are experiencing in the Caribbean is that we are having more of these disasters. And importantly, not that we are having more hurricanes, we are having stronger hurricanes.
“It is not only that we are having droughts and floods, but what we are starting to see is that these disasters are happening in parallel, they are happening at the same time and so countries are being faced with an unprecedented barrage of climate related hazards that are impacting the quality of lives, impacting our economy and impacting our ability to provide for other essential needs,” the CCCCC official added.
The IPCC’s full Sixth Assessment Report is over 1,300 pages long and its summary for policy makers is almost 40 pages. It is written by over 250 scientists from over 66 countries who utilised over 14,000 peer-reviewed publications.
Young said in “other words, the report represents the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change ever produced”.
“It uses the best available science and tools…and while we are still digesting the technical report, it is very clear that the findings, as mentioned earlier, are damning, dire and sobering for the region.”
He noted six key findings from the report and their implications for the Caribbean.
According to Young, the report found that the world is on track to reach the 1.5C temperature threshold by 2040 with devastating implications for Caribbean states and for the 1.5 to Stay Alive rallying cry of the Caribbean.
He warned that increased temperatures equal hotter days and nights and more intense heat waves as well as increasing heavy precipitation events and flooding.
There is also an increasing number and severity of droughts and that while climate change impacts are global, some regions, including the Caribbean, will experience an increasing and co-occurring number of extreme weather-related disasters.
“Not only will climate-related hazards increase and become more severe, but they will co-occur, stressing government ability to adequately respond,” he said, noting that “our oceans are rising, becoming hotter, and more acidic with devastating impacts on key sectors, such as tourism, fishing and livelihoods”.
Young said that some observed changes are already locked in and are irreversible over period of hundreds to millennia, sea level rise, acidification, melting of glaciers and loss of biodiversity.
“As such, Caribbean countries will continue to be impacted by sea level rise and coral bleaching,” he said, urging Caricom to “ramp up adaptation measures”.
Young said that human actions are “unequivocally” responsible for rapidly changing climate resulting in increasing and intensifying climate-related hazards.
“While this recognition is an important one scientifically, knowing the cause of climate change does not, in and of itself, reduce the vulnerability of the region to the effects of climate change. Nevertheless, the recognition is critical, in that, it demonstrates that humans also can make a change, if only we have the political will.”
