THE United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a report — its second in eight months — to once again underscore what is becoming distressingly obvious: humankind has failed to secure a “liveable future” for itself. Without mincing words, the report warns that we may have run out of time to arrest global warming and that even if ongoing efforts succeed, there is no escaping a “horrifying atlas of human suffering” with “worse to come”. In a similar report last August, the IPCC had sounded “code red for humanity”, stating that global warming was “dangerously close to being out of control” and that the residents of this planet were “unequivocally” to blame for it. While the earlier report had warned global leaders to step up efforts to arrest global warming and slow down irreversible damage to the earth, the latest one appears to have sounded the planet’s death knell by predicting that the collapse of ecosystems, outbreak of disease, deadly heatwaves, extinction of species, drought and dangerous wildfires and storms will continue even if environmental pollution is reduced quickly.

According to one of the authors of the report, “No one is left unaffected by climate change. Overall, the picture is stark for food systems”. In fact, regions where climate change events combine with other concurrent stresses, such as those associated with bad governance and hardship, will be affected far more. Some of the worst affected regions will include Africa, Asia, South and Central America. For South Asia in particular, there is considerable evidence that the tipping point for substantial changes in the water cycle might be very close. This would translate into prolonged droughts, heavier rains and greater flood hazards, in addition to the increased threat of glacial lake outbursts. For the fifth most populous country in the world, and one which is already among the 10 nations most vulnerable to climate change, the report spells ecological and socioeconomic doom. We have taken few steps to mitigate the effects of climate change, and our future is bleak.

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2022