IPCC FOURTH ASSESSMENT IMPACTS REPORT HIGHLIGHTS POTENTIAL FOR HIGHLY DISRUPTIVE CLIMATE CHANGE AND URGENCY OF ANTICIPATORY ADAPTATION

John C. Topping, Jr., President, Climate Institute

On April 6 2007, just as much of the world was in the midst of religious holidays, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) approved a report that highlighted the potential of climate change to produce large-scale impacts, mostly adverse, on regions around the world, with the most severe impacts likely in regions with limited resources for adaptation such as Africa where many may face severe water shortages and famine and small island nations and deltaic nations that may face inundation of coastal areas. These disproportionate impacts of climate change on countries whose per capita greenhouse emissions are generally well below the global average have factored into decisions such as that of the Presbyterian Church USA in June 2006 to request each of its more than 2.3 million members to become Climate Neutral and stimulated discussions on international and intergenerational ethics involving major universities such as Princeton and Penn State.

Some controversy occurred over efforts of representatives of several powerful fossil fuel producing and consuming nations to weaken language in the Policymakers Summary (LA Times) and (Washington Post). Still the IPCC Policymakers Summary was a remarkably strong document that outlined the potential for widening droughts in much of the world including sub-Saharan Africa, the American Southwest and Mexico, and inundation of low lying island nations and deltaic regions, especially in Asia.

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Policymakers Summary entitled Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability broke new

ground for the IPCC in its strong emphasis on the importance of anticipatory adaptation. A driving force behind this emphasis was Working Group III Co-Chairman, Professor Martin Parry, Director of the Jackson Environment Institute of the University of East Anglia. A Member of the Climate Institute Board of Directors for about a decade before assuming the helm of Working Group II, Parry, together with his frequent co-author Cynthia Rosenzweig, now Director of the Climate Impacts Research Group at Goddard Institute on Space Studies, pioneered in the late 1980s in incorporating adaptation analysis into studies on vulnerability of agriculture to climate change. They argued that it was a mistake to use a "dumb farmer" assumption; in fact farmers in many societies throughout history have shown remarkable capacity for adaptation to environmental and climatic stresses. As a result of their efforts the entire field of climate change vulnerability analysis has been transformed to incorporate a dynamic analysis that analyzes how major stakeholders — farmers, coastal dwellers, etc. — are likely to respond to climate change and adjust their behavior. This has resulted in more realistic and generally lower estimates of disruption; at the same time it has underscored the crucial importance of providing reliable information to stakeholders.

Two of the earliest payoffs from the use of a dynamic analysis occurred in Bangladesh and in Latin America. Tropical cyclones claimed over a million lives in Bangladesh in the 20th century. The institution, over a decade ago, of a low-cost warning system, getting word out to villages, has saved numerous lives. Similarly an ENSO warning system in Latin America involving the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research and Western Hemispheric meteorological and agricultural agencies has enhanced the capacity of Latin American farmers to respond to shifts in the ENSO cycle. These examples also underscore the need to meld climate variability and climate change response strategies. It is unlikely that we can state with confidence that a particular tropical cyclone, flood or drought is due to climate change or to natural climatic variability. We do know, however, that some regions are likely to be quite vulnerable to such weather-related events in any case; with global warming it is likely that some of these vulnerabilities will increase. Similarly as the IPCC Report points out climate change is not the only stress human settlements and ecosystems may face; land degradation, soil erosion, development pressures and land use change may combine with climate change to produce greatly enhanced adverse impacts.

 

Only five weeks before the release of the IPCC Impacts Report the international scientific research society, Sigma Xi, released a report, Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable, that also stressed the crucial need for foresighted adaptation. Much of the atmospheric science work for this report was provided by a Co-author, Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist of the Climate Institute.The driving force behind the adaptation portion was the co-Chair, Rosina Bierbaum, Dean of School of Natural Resources and Environment of the University of Michigan. Thanks to the initiative of United Nations Foundation's Tim Wirth, Sigma Xi Report authors briefed UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the Report's findings. Both the Sigma Xi and IPCC reports have helped move climate change to the forefront on the Agenda of the United Nations for its fall 2007 session. Much of the discussion is likely to function on the paucity of resources for adaptation.

The IPCC report has spurred a profusion of stories on various aspects: implications of climate change for New Orleans (New Orleans Times-Picayune), implications of climate change for California (Alameda Times-Star), adaptation challenges for Northern Europe, overall implications of climate change for biodiversity, and potential impacts of climate change on the poor (AP).

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John Topping has been President and CEO of the Climate Institute since its founding in 1986. He is the editor of two volumes on climate change: Preparing for Climate Change (1988) and Coping with Climate Change (1989). From 1989-1990 he served as editor of the portions of the IPCC First Assessment Report concerning impacts of climate change on human settlement, industry, transport, energy, human health and air quality, and on impacts of climate and UV interactions and as Lead Author of the portions concerning impacts on human settlement, industry and transport. He has not been involved in the preparation of the Fourth Assessment Report. A member of the Climate Institute's Board of Directors, Stephen Schneider, and two members of the Institute's Board of Advisors — Nobuo Mimura and Cynthia Rosenzweig — were Drafting Authors of the Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC Fourth Assessment concerning Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Climate Institute Chief Scientist Michael MacCracken also participated actively in the preparation of the Fourth Assessment Report.