Earth Today | More science needed in climate fight – report

DEEPENING THE integration of science into policy and planning for climate change is urgently needed to address its growing threats to human and planetary health.

This is championed by the publication of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Limiting overshoot: Navigating exceedance of 1.5 degrees Celsius and pathways towards return.

“Decision-makers must be able to identify emerging knowledge needs, while researchers, practitioners, and traditional knowledge holders need channels through which observations and experience can rapidly inform assessment and action,” the report said.

“This requires moving beyond periodic transfers of knowledge towards sustained exchange, in which policy questions help shape research and monitoring, and decisions are revisited as evidence and conditions evolve,” it added.

With greater agility in the science-policy interface, the report noted, should come faster learning and change “without lowering standards of scientific integrity, transparency or participation”.

The reminder of science’s value is included in the report, which cautions that the world is likely to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming over the next few years.

The 1.5 temperature goal is included in the historic Paris Agreement, which sees countries committing to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels”. This is “recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”.

Yet, with ongoing human consumption of fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, causing temperatures to soar and the associated risks to become reality.

The risks include extreme hurricanes and droughts, which Jamaica has experienced firsthand, with the passage of Hurricane Melissa last October and prevailing drought conditions now placing freshwater access at risk in sections of the island.

Professor Michael Taylor, who recently participated in an attribution study titled Climate Change Is Reducing Early Wet Season Rainfall in Puerto Rico and Jamaica, said there is no doubt that climate change is at least partly responsible for the current drying. He has called for the science to play a greater role in helping to turn the corner on climate change even as countries plan better for its varied impacts.

The UNEP publication, meanwhile, maintains that while an overshoot narrows the space for action, it does not eliminate the ability to act. Ultimately, it said, “decisions taken now will influence how high warming rises, how long exceedance lasts, which losses can still be avoided and the capacities available to future generations beyond the peak”.

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