Let's get serious about impacts

Okay, So I've been reviewing the Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Summary for Policy Makers.

It's riveting. If you like this sort of thing. Which I actually do.

But here is their summary of anticipated impacts of climate change. This is a summary of their summary. As I read through the full report, I'll have more to say, especially as it relates to adaptation solutions. The impacts - that we need to adapt to break down like this:

• Decline in freshwater resources: Less freshwater available over all and increase competition among sectors (energy, agriculture, municipal water use, industry, etc.). This has wide ranging impacts we will spend more time with soon. It's a BIG one.
• Terrestrial (land) and freshwater ecosystem damages: extinction, pollutions, invasive species (think kudzu if you live in the southeast US, or zebra mussels if you live near the Great Lakes). This also will lead to irreversible damage to ecosystems, which leads to decrease in carbon storage, decrease in wood production, decline in water quality, loss of additional biodiversity, and damage to ecosystems.
• Sea level rise impacting coastal and low lying areas: includes flooding, storm surges, erosion, and submergence. (Not so good for Miami, New York, LA, London, the Netherlands, the Caribbean, etc. - also not great for communities that will be flooded with the people fleeing these areas.) 
• Marine ecosystems: decline in biodiversity, increase in extinctions, decline in fisheries, including commercial fish catches (Seriously bad news for coastal communities with big fishing dependencies, especially those which have already decimated the estuaries - which most have). 
• Ocean acidification: loss of coral reefs, disruption of the food web (including plankton), increase damage to polar ecosystems, and serious disruption to commercial fisheries. 
• Decline in food security and food production systems: we already are seeing a decline in grain yields, and it is forecast to drop very quickly in the next 25 years. This has some bad ramifications as food prices increase, and food becomes more difficult to grow.
• Food access and prices will become destabilized: as grain production drops and commercial fisheries collapse, (remember grain is fed to livestock as well as humans) access to food sources will become increasingly problematic. People will be hungry.
• Urban areas become increasingly stressed: by heat waves, extreme precipitation - rains, snow, ice, flooding, land slides, air pollution, drought and lack of clean waters, plus an increase strain on infrastructure, and large populations migrating into urban areas due to economic and environmental dislocation.
• Rural areas also stressed: by heat, decline in soil fertility and productivity, difficulties accessing clean safe water and food resources.
• Economic disruptions: while energy needs for heat may decrease over all, energy demand for cooling will increase, and basic infrastructure to support economic activities - such as transportation of people and food - are likely to be deteriorating and threatened - especially by sea level rise and loss of port services.
• Human health will be jeopardized: due to increase in disease vectors such as mosquitoes (think Zika), loss of nutrients from food and less access to clean safe water, and increase in vulnerable populations who are economically marginalized by climate change impacts.
• Human security will decline: meaning we will see increased large scale migrations of human populations, which will put stresses on already stressed communities as resources like food and fresh water grow increasingly scarce.
• Increased violence due to in-group/out-group dynamics: with displaced people migrating and being seen as threatening resource availability.
• Increased civil unrest: due to increase poverty, increased uncertainty, and economic dislocation with greater expectation of state/government responsiveness.
• Negative impacts on territorial integrity and infrastructure: as more demand is placed on access to shared resources, repairs to infrastructure and basic state functions will be increasingly stressed.

And all this results in:

Decreased economic growth, increase poverty, decreased food security, increased number of "poverty traps" and "hunger hotspots".

AND there is no mention of the increasing human populations in the timeframe they are looking at!!

In other words, we are in a bad way people. It won't get better and it won't go away. We have to deal with it, and we have to do it - TOGETHER!

A critical concluding remark of the summary states that:

"Underestimating the complexity of adaptation as a social process can create unrealistic expectations about achieving intended adaptation outcomes." p. 29. This will only exacerbate the negative impacts and increase pending civil unrest. 

It's time for us to address the complexity of adaptation as a social process. And get on with it.



For more details please see:

IPCC, 2014: Summary for policymakers. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.

Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastrandrea, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken,P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L. White (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1-32.