By: Areeba Tahreem
The article title “GLOBAL ISSUES Climate Change” found on the UN website discusses the detrimental ramifications human actions have had on the environment as well as the United Nations efforts in the preceding years and currently as well to combat this serious matter. There are four subheadings within this article, each of which will be summarised in the following paragraphs.
The first subheading “The Human Fingerprint on Greenhouse Gases” discusses the detrimental ramifications of industrialization, deforestation, and large-scale agriculture. As they have all contributed and continue to contribute to high levels of greenhouse gasses (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere. A relationship observed has been that as the concentration of GHG has been rising steadily, mean global temperatures also rise along with it. The burning of fossil fuels produces the most abundant GHG, accounting for about two-thirds of GHGs, carbon dioxide (CO2). Humans utilize these sources for their benefit but to the planet’s disadvantage.
The second subheading “The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)”, states the main aim of the IPCC, which is to provide an objective source of scientific information. The Fifth Assessment Report, provides a comprehensive assessment of sea-level rise, and its causes, over the past few decades and also estimates cumulative CO2 emissions since pre-industrial times and provides a CO2 budget for future emissions to limit warming to less than 2°C. Secondly, another report focuses on Global Warming of 1.5°C; it states while previous estimates focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by 2°C, this report shows that many of the adverse impacts of climate change will come at the 1.5°C mark. The report also highlights several climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5ºC compared to 2ºC, or more.
The third subheading titled “United Nations legal instruments” dwells into important legal bindings the UN has accomplished. Firstly, the “Earth Summit” produced by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was a first step in addressing the climate change problem. The ultimate aim of the Convention is to prevent “dangerous” human interference with the climate system. Secondly, the Kyoto Protocol focuses on emission reduction targets. The protocol’s first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. The second commitment period began on 1 January 2013 and ended in 2020. Thirdly, the Paris Agreement was established to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable low-carbon future. While its central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The last subheading titled “2019 Climate Action Summit” focused on the main objective of this summit. Which was to target key sectors where action can make the most difference: heavy industry, nature-based solutions, cities, energy, resilience, and climate finance. World leaders reported on what they are doing, and what more they intend to do when they convene in 2020 for the UN climate conference, where commitments will be renewed and may be increased.
The article’s underlying theme is, humans have a tremendous negative influence on the climate system, but human actions still have the potential to determine the future course of climate, pointing to strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to limit climate change.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 