2022: Year Of Climate Mitigation? – OpEd

Omicron has gained a worldwide presence after the terrible end of the Glasgow Climate Summit in November 2021. Climate change got little or no media attention or popular concern at the time. The climatic situation will continue to deteriorate as climate change accelerates. The country’s authorities cannot wait until the next Climate Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022 to debate what should be done about climate change.

Even if 153 countries agreed to a compromise at the Glasgow Climate Summit, attaining the 1.5 degree Celsius goal in the near future would be very challenging, according to the Emission Gap Report 2021. In the past, the world has warmed faster than it has ever warmed.

Between 1880 and 2021, eight years on Earth’s surface were the hottest ever recorded. In 2021, the average global surface temperature reached its sixth-highest level ever. During the past five years, the world’s oceans experienced their best five-year run since records began in the 1950s. As a consequence, 2021 will go down in history as the hottest year ever.

Concerns have been made concerning a rise in sea level that was previously inconceivable. A recent study done by Simon Fraser University came to this result. The sea level in the middle Indian Ocean has risen by around a metre in the last two centuries.

Despite the fact that Covid-19 has been a pandemic in a number of nations for more than two years, the World Health Organization warns that the epidemic pales in comparison to the long-term difficulties the globe faces as a consequence of climate change. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2022 received contributions from more than 1,000 business, government, and civil society leaders throughout the world and provided a summary.

According to the findings of the research, nation contributions to COP 26 fell short of the Paris climate objective of 1.5 degrees Celsius, which was established in 2015. If current trends continue, global warming will not be restricted to a rise of less than 2 degrees Celsius over the next century, as previously predicted. An annual public opinion survey conducted by the report has identified three key global threats for the next decade, according to the poll. They make no effort to address issues such as climate change, extreme weather, or the loss of biodiversity.

The second section of the report is focused to environmental deterioration caused by people, as well as natural resource issues and concerns. Following infectious diseases is climate change, which is rated sixth, and failure to act on climate change is considered as the most significant threat to world peace in the short and medium term, i.e. during the next five years and a decade, according to the research.

In a poll conducted by Greenpeace, more than 77 percent of respondents said they believed international efforts to tackle climate change had not yet started or were in the very early stages of development. According to Saadia Zahidi, the executive director of the World Economic Forum, limiting Covid-19 and its derivatives would be more difficult if there were more differences between countries’ economic development. When confronted with global concerns that cannot be disregarded, teamwork will become increasingly difficult to achieve.

According to Chapter 2, upward trends were quickly resumed, with GHG emission rates increasing at a greater pace in 2020 than they did on average over the previous decade. Data demonstrates that greenhouse gas emissions climbed at a faster pace in 2020 than they did in the prior decade, despite Covid limitations on carbon dioxide emissions. Throughout this chapter, the report examined the costs and perils of carbon-intensive development, in addition to the dangers of shuttering big-scale firms that employ a huge number of people, which might lead to societal and geopolitical crises. This is a tough decision to make.

There are many and undiscovered risks linked with experimental biotechnological and geoengineering methods, according to the research. If the public does not support land-use changes or price increases, political difficulties will erupt as a result of the disagreement. A poorly thought-out approach might weaken people’s equality both inside and beyond their own countries, exacerbating global tensions in the process.

Global Risks Report 2022 suggests that the Covid epidemic may provide lessons for us on how to become more robust in the future. One idea is for more space cooperation as well as better cyber defence as well as a slower rate of climate change.

*Adeel Mukhtar Mirza, Assistant Research Associate, Islamabad Policy Research Institute