Long-term global plan must be drawn up to tackle climate change
The challenge facing industrialised countries is to negotiate a long-term global regulatory framework, with intermediate targets, that can reduce greenhouse emissions to a level that limits the increase in global mean surface temperature to 2oC above pre-industrial levels.
That was the message delivered to delegates at the British Society of Animal Science’s Livestock and Global Climate Change meeting, held in Tunisia, by Defra’s chief scientific advisor Bob Watson.
“The long-term challenge is to meet the goal of Article 2 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in other words the ‘stabilisation of greenhouse concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, and in a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened, and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner’,” he said, outlining why climate change is an environmental, development and security issue.
Professor Watson explained that human activities are changing the Earth’s climate and further human-induced climate change is inevitable. “The question is not whether the Earth’s climate will change in response to human activities, but rather where, when and by how much. The Earth’s climate has warmed, on average by about 0.7oC, during the past 100 years, with the decades of the 1990s and 2000s being the warmest.
“The temporal and spatial patterns of precipitation have changed, sea levels have risen by up to 25cm, most non-polar glaciers are retreating, and the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice in summer are decreasing.
“And projected changes in the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols are projected to result in increases in global mean surface temperatures, between 1990 and 2100, of 1.1oC to 6.4oC, with land areas warming more than the oceans, and high latitudes warming more than the tropics,” he added.
Most industrialised countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which mandates industrialised countries to reduce their emissions on an average by 5.2% between 2008 and 2012 relative to emissions in 1990, with individual industrialised country targets varying. There are no emissions targets for developing countries.
“And given that many industrialised countries will not meet their reduction targets with domestic actions alone, this provides significant opportunities for carbon trading, which are likely to provide sustainable development benefits for many developing countries,” he said.
Presented to the British Society of Animal Science’s Livestock and Global Climate Change meeting, May 17 to 20, 2008, Hammamet, Tunisia.
Full details:
B Watson: “Climate change: an environmental, development and security issue.”
http://www.bsas.org.uk/Meetings_&_Workshops/Past_Meetings/ Presentation_08_01_watson (pdf) summary(pdf)
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