As
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change opens meeting to finalize
latest report to the world, head of agency says meeting challenge of
global warming will not be easy, but that it can be done
'May
I humbly suggest that policymakers avoid being overcome by the seeming
hopelessness of addressing climate change,' said Rajendra Pachauri,
chairperson of the IPCC, on Monday. (Photo: NASA)
"It is not hopeless."
That was the key message delivered in Copenhagen on Monday by Rajendra Pachauri, chairperson of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
as the agency met to finalize the findings and language of its pending
Synthesis Report, the last installment of its Fifth Assessment Report
(AR5), designed to provide the world's policymakers with a comprehensive
scientific assessment of the risks of human-caused global warming and
climate change.
"We still have time to build a better, more
sustainable world. We still have time to avoid the most serious impacts
of climate change... But we have precious little of that time."
—Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC chair
"The Synthesis Report will provide the roadmap by which policymakers
will hopefully find their way to a global agreement to finally reverse
course on climate change," said Pachauri. "It gives us the knowledge to
make informed choices, the knowledge to build a brighter, more
sustainable future. It enhances our vital understanding of the rationale
for action—and the serious implications for inaction."
What was critical for world leaders, policymakers and the global
public at large to understand, he said, was that though it won't be easy
to avert the worse impacts of the world's changing climate, it is
possible.
"A great deal of work and tall hurdles lie ahead. But it can be done.
We still have time to build a better, more sustainable world. We still
have time to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change," he
said. "But we have precious little of that time."
The series of recent IPCC reports that have come out over the last
twelve months and make up the AR5 assessment have shared the common
theme of urgency and the Synthesis Report, once finalized, will be the
official word from the world's top climate scientists as national
government's send their delegates to next year's meeting of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Paris.
Alongside the most thorough review of the available climate research
ever conducted, the report will offer specific guidance on both
mitigation and solutions to address the dangerous levels of greenhouse
gases that are increasingly warming the planet's atmosphere and oceans.
"Much has been made of the growing peril of delaying the hard choices
that need to be made to adapt to and mitigate climate change," said
Pauchari. "I do not discount those challenges. But the Synthesis Report
shows that solutions are at hand."
At the last high-level UNFCC talks, known as Conferences of Parties
meetings or (COP), world leaders agreed to the goal of limiting global
temperature increases this century to 2°C, but so far no binding
commitments have been made, either at the national or international
level, that scientists say would such a target.
Watch the IPCC's opening session:
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