A new report released this week by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) looks at the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change.
The reportgives the clearest indication to date of how a warmer world is affecting all living things on Earth.
Here are five things we learnt from it.
1- Things are way worse than we thought
From the melting of the Greenland ice sheet to the destruction of coral reefs, climate related impacts are hitting the world at the high end of what modellers once expected. And much more quickly than previously assessed by the IPCC.
Right now, as the new report makes clear, around 40% of the world’s population is “highly vulnerable” to the impacts of climate change.
But the burden is falling mainly on those who did the least…
De-extinction scientists are hoping to bring back a long lost “tiger” back to life, almost 100 years after the last of its kind died. Researchers are planning to use stem cells to create an embryo of the Tasmanian tiger that they can implant into a surrogate animal.
Tasmanian tigers, or thylacines were a type of marsupial that went extinct in mainland Australia around 3,000 years ago. They lived on in Tasmania until European settlers wiped them out in the wild through hunting. The last living Tasmanian tiger died in captivity in 1936.
Scientists with the University of Melbourne, Australia, have been working on a project to “de-extinct” the animals for years and new funding for a state-of-the-art laboratory has brought them to the brink of resurrecting this lost species.
A philanthropic donation of over $3.6m USD made to the university is expected to go to towards the Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research (TIGRR) Lab.
Tasmanian tigers, also known as Tasmanian wolves, were a predatory marsupial that shared some characteristics with modern-day dingoes or wild dogs in Australia. They were visually striking animals with distinctive stripes similar to zebras on their hindlegs.
Scientists working at the lab said the funding be used in three main areas in their de-extinction efforts: Greater understanding of the Tasmanian tiger’s genome, using the stem cells from other marsupials to make a thylacine embryo, and transferring it to a surrogate animal such as the mouse-like dunnart.
“The level of support we have for this project now I think it is conceivable that we could a thylacine-like cell within 10 years,” Professor Andrew Pask, from the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne, told Newsweek.
“It’s a big job and it needs some significant support to drive it. Fortunately we now have that. It is a bit like Jurassic park—we start with a living cell from a closely related species, in this case the dunnart—and we edit that cell to turn it genome into that of the thylacine. Once you have your ‘thylacine’ cell, you can use cloning technology to turn that cell into a living animal.”
Pask said that the donation would provide 10 years of funding for the TIGRR lab. Pask and his team helped sequence the Tasmanian tiger genome in 2017. This mapped out the DNA blueprint of the animal and provided a crucial first step on the road to bringing it back to life.
Stock image of Thylacine in captivity. The animals were hunted to near extinction by European settlers in Tasmania and the last one died in captivity in the 1930s.TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY / STRINGER/GETTY IMAGES
Pask said that Tasmanian tigers were a good candidate for de-extinction as they played a crucial role in balancing Tasmania’s ecosystems and could do so again if they were reintroduced.
“The thylacine was our only apex predator and its loss from the ecosystem destabilizes everything that sits beneath it,” Pask said. “A great example of this is Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease, which nearly wiped [that species] out. If you have these apex predators around like the thylacine—they pick off and eat the sick animals controlling the spread of diseases.”
He said that the gene-editing technologies advanced at the lab could also help protect other key marsupial species in Australia threatened by ecosystem changes and recent wildfires because they help safeguard biodiversity from being lost in the region.
The donation came from the Wilson Family Trust.
Russel Wilson told the University of Melbourne about the decision to fund the research: “We came across Professor Pask’s incredible work, believe it or not, via some YouTube clips on him talking about his research and passion for the thylacine and Australian marsupials. We realise that we are on the verge of a great breakthrough in science through improvements in technology and its application to the genome.”
This article has been updated to include quotes from Andrew Pask.
Ukraine’s defense ministry confirmed the arrival of Russian airborne troops on Telegram, though it is unclear if they are involved in a ground battle just yet. “There is an ongoing fight between the invaders and the Ukrainians,” they said. Authorities confirmed Wednesday midday that “massive shelling…
Environmental Violations, Animal Cruelty and Threat to Wolves Cited in New Lawsuit
Quincy, Calif. — Feather River Action! and Project Coyote jointly filed a lawsuit yesterday against Plumas and Sierra counties for violating the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to stop the illegal killing of wildlife without the legally required environmental review.
The lawsuit challenges the county’s failure to conduct the CEQA review of its $76,623 taxpayer-funded contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Wildlife Services program. This contract authorizes Wildlife Services, a highly controversial federal program, to kill hundreds of animals in these counties every year without assessing the ecological impacts of widespread killing and without considering alternative non-lethal management strategies.
Each year, Wildlife Services indiscriminately kills millions of animals nationwide — approximately 80,000 in California alone — largely at the behest of commercial agriculture. Wolves, a protected species in California, are particularly at risk from USDA Wildlife Services’ activities, which killed 1,921 coyotes and thousands of other animals in Plumas and Sierra counties over the past decade.
Records indicate that in just one year, USDA Wildlife Services killed more than 1,100 muskrats in Plumas and Sierra counties. Muskrats play a similar ecological role to beavers, 247 of whom were killed by local Wildlife Services employees over the past ten years. Wildlife Services operates across 35 of 52 California counties.
Across the country, Wildlife Services’ outdated program continues to rely on the use of indiscriminate and often inhumane tools to kill native wildlife including snares, poisons and aerial gunning. Condemned by professional scientists with the American Society of Mammalogists since the early 20th century, this taxpayer-subsidized program continues to focus on lethal and non-selective killing practices despite widespread availability and efficacy of non-lethal methods and husbandry practices.
“In all my years of trying to work with Wildlife Services, I have yet to encounter any willingness from the program to consider the best available science demonstrating that nonlethal is the most effective way to protect livestock,” said Michelle Lute, PhD in wildlife management and national carnivore conservation manager for Project Coyote. “Instead, they consistently insist on retaining every archaic tool in their lethal arsenal even when it repeatedly endangers people’s children and companion animals and does little to protect livestock. Fortunately, California has CEQA, a law that protects people and the environment from a rogue program that should be named Wildlife Disservices.”
Wildlife Services spends more than $100 million annually nationwide in taxpayer dollars to kill over one million animals, including birds, beavers, coyotes, mountain lions, bears, wolves and other animals. These killings occur despite peer-reviewed research showing that reckless slaughter of native carnivores causes broad ecological destruction and is not proven to protect livestock or reduce human conflicts with wildlife.
In 2016, wildlife advocates, including Project Coyote, successfully sued Mendocino County, requiring the county to perform a full Environmental Impact Report of their contract with Wildlife Services pursuant to CEQA. Last year, Mendocino County ultimately chose to end its contract with Wildlife Services and instead pursue non-lethal strategies for wildlife management.
This follows on the heels of Marin County, which ended its contract with Wildlife Services in 2000 and adopted a non-lethal cost-share program to assist ranchers with implementation of non-lethal methods, such as fencing and guardian animals, to reduce conflicts between wildlife and livestock. Non-lethal methods precipitated a 62% decline in coyote predation on sheep in Marin from 2002 to 2011, according to the Marin County Department of Agriculture.
Despite efforts by Project Coyote and Feather River Action! to urge the Plumas and Sierra County Board of Supervisors to follow a similar path and comply with CEQA by considering the destructive ecological impacts of their contract with Wildlife Services, the board chose instead to renew their contract with no environmental review and little to no consideration of effective nonlethal alternatives.
“Many of us were horrified to learn that our local taxes were funding this cruel and unnecessary killing program,” said Joshua Hart, spokesperson for Feather River Action! “While Plumas County is losing county staff due to stagnant wages, a publicly-funded killing program for private ranching interests continues to be fully funded by the Board of Supervisors year after year. Wildlife Services’ methods are cruel, unjust and harm the ecological fabric of the Lost Sierra. Enough is enough.”
In the last decade, indiscriminate killing methods used by Wildlife Services have also killed more than 50,000 “non-target” animals, including wolves, companion animals, endangered California condors, bald eagles and other birds. Studies show such mass killing negatively impacts the biodiversity, health and function of ecosystems.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine took much of the world by surprise. It is an unprovoked and unjustified attack that will go down in history as one of the major war crimes of the 21st century, argues Noam Chomsky in the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows. Political considerations, such as those cited by Russian President Vladimir Putin, cannot be used as arguments to justify the launching of an invasion against a sovereign nation. In the face of this horrific invasion, though, the U.S. must choose urgent diplomacy over military escalation, as the latter could constitute a “death warrant for the species, with no victors,” Chomsky says.
Noam Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of the most important intellectuals alive. His intellectual stature has been compared to that of Galileo, Newton and Descartes, as his work has had tremendous influence on a variety of areas of scholarly and scientific inquiry, including linguistics, logic and mathematics, computer science, psychology, media studies, philosophy, politics and international affairs. He is the author of some 150 books and the recipient of scores of highly prestigious awards, including the Sydney Peace Prize and the Kyoto Prize (Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize), and of dozens of honorary doctorate degrees from the world’s most renowned universities. Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and currently Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona.
C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has taken most people by surprise, sending shockwaves throughout the world, although there were plenty of indications that Putin had become quite agitated by NATO’s expansion eastward and Washington’s refusal to take seriously his “red line” security demands regarding Ukraine. Why do you think he decided to launch an invasion at this point in time?
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Noam Chomsky: Before turning to the question, we should settle a few facts that are uncontestable. The most crucial one is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a major war crime, ranking alongside the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland in September 1939, to take only two salient examples. It always makes sense to seek explanations, but there is no justification, no extenuation.
Turning now to the question, there are plenty of supremely confident outpourings about Putin’s mind. The usual story is that he is caught up in paranoid fantasies, acting alone, surrounded by groveling courtiers of the kind familiar here in what’s left of the Republican Party traipsing to Mar-a-Lago for the Leader’s blessing.
The flood of invective might be accurate, but perhaps other possibilities might be considered. Perhaps Putin meant what he and his associates have been saying loud and clear for years. It might be, for example, that, “Since Putin’s major demand is an assurance that NATO will take no further members, and specifically not Ukraine or Georgia, obviously there would have been no basis for the present crisis if there had been no expansion of the alliance following the end of the Cold War, or if the expansion had occurred in harmony with building a security structure in Europe that included Russia.” The author of these words is former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, one of the few serious Russia specialists in the U.S. diplomatic corps, writing shortly before the invasion. He goes on to conclude that the crisis “can be easily resolved by the application of common sense…. By any common-sense standard it is in the interest of the United States to promote peace, not conflict. To try to detach Ukraine from Russian influence — the avowed aim of those who agitated for the ‘color revolutions’ — was a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one. Have we so soon forgotten the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis?”The options that remain after the invasion are grim. The least bad is support for the diplomatic options that still exist.
Matlock is hardly alone. Much the same conclusions about the underlying issues are reached in the memoirs of CIA head William Burns, another of the few authentic Russia specialists. [Diplomat] George Kennan’s even stronger stand has belatedly been widely quoted, backed as well by former Defense Secretary William Perry, and outside the diplomatic ranks by the noted international relations scholar John Mearsheimer and numerous other figures who could hardly be more mainstream.
None of this is obscure. U.S. internal documents, released by WikiLeaks, reveal that Bush II’s reckless offer to Ukraine to join NATO at once elicited sharp warnings from Russia that the expanding military threat could not be tolerated. Understandably.
We might incidentally take note of the strange concept of “the left” that appears regularly in excoriation of “the left” for insufficient skepticism about the “Kremlin’s line.”
The fact is, to be honest, that we do not know why the decision was made, even whether it was made by Putin alone or by the Russian Security Council in which he plays the leading role. There are, however, some things we do know with fair confidence, including the record reviewed in some detail by those just cited, who have been in high places on the inside of the planning system. In brief, the crisis has been brewing for 25 years as the U.S. contemptuously rejected Russian security concerns, in particular their clear red lines: Georgia and especially Ukraine.
There is good reason to believe that this tragedy could have been avoided, until the last minute. We’ve discussed it before, repeatedly. As to why Putin launched the criminal aggression right now, we can speculate as we like. But the immediate background is not obscure — evaded but not contested.
It’s easy to understand why those suffering from the crime may regard it as an unacceptable indulgence to inquire into why it happened and whether it could have been avoided. Understandable, but mistaken. If we want to respond to the tragedy in ways that will help the victims, and avert still worse catastrophes that loom ahead, it is wise, and necessary, to learn as much as we can about what went wrong and how the course could have been corrected. Heroic gestures may be satisfying. They are not helpful.
As often before, I’m reminded of a lesson I learned long ago. In the late 1960s, I took part in a meeting in Europe with a few representatives of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (“Viet Cong,” in U.S. parlance). It was during the brief period of intense opposition to the horrendous U.S. crimes in Indochina. Some young people were so infuriated that they felt that only a violent reaction would be an appropriate response to the unfolding monstrosities: breaking windows on Main Street, bombing an ROTC center. Anything less amounted to complicity in terrible crimes. The Vietnamese saw things very differently. They strongly opposed all such measures. They presented their model of an effective protest: a few women standing in silent prayer at the graves of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam. They were not interested in what made American opponents of the war feel righteous and honorable. They wanted to survive.
It’s a lesson I’ve often heard in one or another form from victims of hideous suffering in the Global South, the prime target of imperial violence. One we should take to heart, adapted to circumstances. Today that means an effort to understand why this tragedy occurred and what could have been done to avert it, and to apply these lessons to what comes next.
The question cuts deep. There is no time to review this critically important matter here, but repeatedly the reaction to real or imagined crisis has been to reach for the six-gun rather than the olive branch. It’s almost a reflex, and the consequences have generally been awful — for the traditional victims. It’s always worthwhile to try to understand, to think a step or two ahead about the likely consequences of action or inaction. Truisms of course, but worth reiterating, because they are so easily dismissed in times of justified passion.Of course, it is true that the U.S. and its allies violate international law without a blink of an eye, but that provides no extenuation for Putin’s crimes.
The options that remain after the invasion are grim. The least bad is support for the diplomatic options that still exist, in the hope of reaching an outcome not too far from what was very likely achievable a few days ago: Austrian-style neutralization of Ukraine, some version of Minsk II federalism within. Much harder to reach now. And — necessarily — with an escape hatch for Putin, or outcomes will be still more dire for Ukraine and everyone else, perhaps almost unimaginably so.
Very remote from justice. But when has justice prevailed in international affairs? Is it necessary to review the appalling record once again?
Like it or not, the choices are now reduced to an ugly outcome that rewards rather than punishes Putin for the act of aggression — or the strong possibility of terminal war. It may feel satisfying to drive the bear into a corner from which it will lash out in desperation — as it can. Hardly wise.
Meanwhile, we should do anything we can to provide meaningful support for those valiantly defending their homeland against cruel aggressors, for those escaping the horrors, and for the thousands of courageous Russians publicly opposing the crime of their state at great personal risk, a lesson to all of us.
And we should also try to find ways to help a much broader class of victims: all life on Earth. This catastrophe took place at a moment where all of the great powers, indeed all of us, must be working together to control the great scourge of environmental destruction that is already exacting a grim toll, with much worse soon to come unless major efforts are undertaken quickly. To drive home the obvious, the IPCC just released the latest and by far most ominous of its regular assessments of how we are careening to catastrophe.
Meanwhile, the necessary actions are stalled, even driven into reverse, as badly needed resources are devoted to destruction and the world is now on a course to expand the use of fossil fuels, including the most dangerous and conveniently abundant of them, coal.
A more grotesque conjuncture could hardly be devised by a malevolent demon. It can’t be ignored. Every moment counts.
The Russian invasion is in clear violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of another state. Yet Putin sought to offer legal justifications for the invasion during his speech on February 24, and Russia cites Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and Syria as evidence that the United States and its allies violate international law repeatedly. Can you comment on Putin’s legal justifications for the invasion of Ukraine and on the status of international law in the post-Cold War era?
There is nothing to say about Putin’s attempt to offer legal justification for his aggression. Its merit is zero.
Of course, it is true that the U.S. and its allies violate international law without a blink of an eye, but that provides no extenuation for Putin’s crimes. Kosovo, Iraq and Libya did, however, have direct implications for the conflict over Ukraine.
The Iraq invasion was a textbook example of the crimes for which Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg, pure unprovoked aggression. And a punch in Russia’s face.Contestation is a death warrant for the species, with no victors. We are at a crucial point in human history.
In the case of Kosovo, NATO aggression (meaning U.S. aggression) was claimed to be “illegal but justified” (for example, by the International Commission on Kosovo chaired by Richard Goldstone) on grounds that the bombing was undertaken to terminate ongoing atrocities. That judgment required reversal of the chronology. The evidence is overwhelming that the flood of atrocities was the consequence of the invasion: predictable, predicted, anticipated. Furthermore, diplomatic options were available, [but] as usual, ignored in favor of violence.
High U.S. officials confirm that it was primarily the bombing of Russian ally Serbia — without even informing them in advance — that reversed Russian efforts to work together with the U.S. somehow to construct a post-Cold War European security order, a reversal accelerated with the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Libya after Russia agreed not to veto a UN Security Council Resolution that NATO at once violated.
Events have consequences; however, the facts may be concealed within the doctrinal system.
The status of international law did not change in the post-Cold War period, even in words, let alone actions. President Clinton made it clear that the U.S. had no intention of abiding by it. The Clinton Doctrine declared that the U.S. reserves the right to act “unilaterally when necessary,” including “unilateral use of military power” to defend such vital interests as “ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources.” His successors as well, and anyone else who can violate the law with impunity.
That’s not to say that international law is of no value. It has a range of applicability, and it is a useful standard in some respects.
The aim of the Russian invasion seems to be to take down the Zelensky government and install in its place a pro-Russian one. However, no matter what happens, Ukraine is facing a daunting future for its decision to become a pawn in Washington’s geostrategic games. In that context, how likely is it that economic sanctions will cause Russia to change its stance toward Ukraine — or do the economic sanctions aim at something bigger, such as undermining Putin’s control inside Russia and ties with countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and possibly even China itself?
Ukraine may not have made the most judicious choices, but it had nothing like the options available to the imperial states. I suspect that the sanctions will drive Russia to even greater dependency on China. Barring a serious change of course, Russia is a kleptocratic petrostate relying on a resource that must decline sharply or we are all finished. It’s not clear whether its financial system can weather a sharp attack, through sanctions or other means. All the more reason to offer an escape hatch with a grimace.
Western governments, mainstream opposition parties, including the Labour Party in U.K., and corporate media alike have embarked on a chauvinistic anti-Russian campaign. The targets include not only Russia’s oligarchs but musicians, conductors and singers, and even football owners such as Roman Abramovich of Chelsea FC. Russia has even been banned from Eurovision in 2022 following the invasion. This is the same reaction that the corporate media and the international community in general exhibited towards the U.S. following its invasion and subsequent destruction of Iraq, wasn’t it?
Your wry comment is quite appropriate. And we can go on in ways that are all too familiar.
Do you think the invasion will initiate a new era of sustained contestation between Russia (and possibly in alliance with China) and the West?
It’s hard to tell where the ashes will fall — and that might turn out not to be a metaphor. So far, China is playing it cool, and is likely to try to carry forward its extensive program of economic integration of much of the world within its expanding global system, a few weeks ago incorporating Argentina within the Belt and Road initiative, while watching rivals destroy themselves.
As we’ve discussed before, contestation is a death warrant for the species, with no victors. We are at a crucial point in human history. It cannot be denied. It cannot be ignored.
A president may be reluctant to use a nuclear weapon 80 times more destructive than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, but perhaps less so for a destructive 2- or 3-kiloton bomb.
The issue with Montana’s wolf hunting laws and regulations arose as FWP and the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission are facing a lawsuit from two wildlife advocacy groupsBY TOM KUGLIN, INDEPENDENT RECORDFEBRUARY 28, 2022
Gray wolf. Shutterstock photo
HELENA – Despite a recent interpretation of Montana state law that aerial hunting of wolves is not prohibited, doing so runs afoul of federal law.
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks argued in state District Court recently that state law does not prohibit aerial hunting of wolves. FWP’s arguments came as legal justification for the agency removing language from the state’s wolf regulations that had stated hunting wolves from aircraft was barred. The agency says that inclusion of that language in the regulations for a decade was an error.
In response to media reporting on the case, a number of readers pointed to federal law addressing aerial hunting. The Airborne Hunting…
Climate change is already pushing some human systems and ecosystems beyond their adaptation limits
Tropical Cyclone Winston in the South Pacific: ‘There are proportionately more of the really nasty category 3, 4 and 5 cyclones, driven by warming oceans.’ Photograph: Nasa Goddard Rapid Response/NOAA
In the past decade the two most intense cyclones recorded to date in the southern hemisphere ripped through the Pacific. Tropical Cyclone Pam, the second worst, devastated Vanuatu in 2015 while in 2016 Tropical Cyclone Winston, the worst, ravaged Fiji. Both not only caused extreme environmental damage but economic damage worth 64% and 20% of the respective nations’ GDP.
Pam and Winston fit the global pattern for cyclones: there are proportionately more of the really nasty category 3, 4 and 5 cyclones, driven by warming oceans. And, sadly, there is no doubt that as our climate continues to change, the Pacific should brace for more extreme weather events. This is confirmed in the newest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released on Monday.
The report shows climate change is already pushing some human systems and ecosystems beyond their tolerance and adaptation limits. It paints a stark picture; that climate change is adversely impacting every region in the world. More worryingly, the report shows that the most vulnerable people and ecosystems will be the worst hit, including in the Pacific. Pacific Island countries and territories are the least responsible for global warming and biodiversity loss yet they are facing the harshest consequences that will continue to worsen in years to come. Their future is uncertain if the world fails to pay attention to the report’s warnings.
Future extreme events and other changes in climate aren’t just devastating the Pacific’s environment, causing rising seas levels, more intense storms and deadly cyclones. They will also have widespread implications for key sectors including food, infrastructure, water and sanitation, marine ecosystems, disaster management, and health and wellbeing. A projected increase in the number of days of heavy rainfall by 2050 could lead to a heightened risk of water contamination, resulting in increasing incidences of diarrhoea, cholera and typhoid fever. Heat stress in the Pacific is also projected to increase with higher temperatures, leading to decreases in worker productivity and, in some severe cases, illness or even loss of life. Climate change impacts on mental health are particularly pertinent to the Pacific, with Tuvaluans already experiencing distress because of the local environmental impacts caused or exacerbated by the climate crisis, and by hearing about its potential future consequences.
The best risk reduction strategy is to limit global warming to the Paris agreement target of 1.5C. Beyond this temperature, the Pacific Islands could reach some biophysical limits to adaptation, if not already. Even achieving emissions reduction targets consistent with the 1.5C goal is estimated to result in the further loss of 70% to 90% of reef-building corals compared with today, with 99% of corals being lost or severely damaged under warming of 2C or more above the pre-industrial period.
People in the Pacific are not passively accepting the adverse impacts. Pacific Island nations have been spearheading demands for stronger commitments and are united in their calls for keeping global warming below 1.5C. They are pioneering innovative adaptation practices that are already being documented and replicated.
Traditional adaptive strategies influenced by Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge are having positive effects. This includes rainwater harvesting during the increasing droughts, planting native plants along coastlines to prevent erosion and flooding from higher sea levels, developing plant nurseries such as for adapted crop species or varieties, experimenting with growing salt-tolerant crops, and relocating crop cultivation inland.
In a similar vein, Pacific fishers are adapting to uncertainty by diversifying livelihoods, building social networks, expanding aquaculture production, switching fishing grounds and changing target species. There are also instances where climatic changes can provide new opportunities. For example, future increased rainfall inland could provide new areas for aquaculture in the Solomon Islands. Or new electric batteries using cheap renewable energy could revitalise near-shore fisheries constrained by rising fossil fuel prices. When linked with effective marine reserves, these are examples of adaptation strategies which can help ensure sustainable management of coastal fisheries and ecosystems.
Nature-based solutions for adaptation of ocean and coastal ecosystems are demonstrating multiple benefits in the Pacific when well-designed and implemented. The less the planet warms, the more effective and enduring and less costly these adaptation strategies are likely to be – which is why aggressive emissions reductions are needed simultaneously with locally relevant and sustainable adaptation strategies.
A lack of local resourcing is not helped by the fact that developed country climate finance has fallen short of the US$100bn a year commitment for 2020, with the money that has been contributed overwhelmingly supporting greenhouse gas reduction activities rather than adaptation. Annual adaptation costs in developing countries alone are estimated to be in the range of US$70bn, with the expectation of reaching US$140bn to US$300bn in 2030 and US$280bn to US$500bn in 2050.
The risks from climate change will keep on mounting as long as we have our foot on the greenhouse gas accelerator globally. Pacific Islands nations have been leading the call for emission-reduction action and climate adaptation for decades. But they can’t fairly do this on their own – and nor should they be asked to. There are growing calls for developed countries to urgently dial up action on adaptation policy, finance and practice so that they keep pace with climate change. And, of course, developed countries must ramp up their emission reduction actions because while climate adaptation can take the edge off climate impacts in the Pacific, the IPCC report shows clearly that on its own adaptation will not be enough. There is a lot to do and no time to waste.
Prof Mark Howden is a vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and director of the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at the Australian National University
Ofa Ma’asi-Kaisamy is manager of the Pacific Climate Change Centre at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme
