The partially dried up Lake Serre-Ponçon, whose water level has dropped by 16 meters due to the drought, in Ubaye Serre-Ponçon (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), August 25, 2022. JOEL SAGET / AFP
For the past fifty years, the Meteorological Organization estimates that on average every day, a disaster related to weather, climate or water hazards has occurred, causing the deaths of 115 people and $202 million in losses. The impotence to curb global warming is questioned, but also the inaction in adapting to the rise in temperature and the multiplication of climate extremes, i.e. measures aimed at slowing down or avoiding damage to societies and ecosystems.
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Efforts that are still “urgently needed to plan, finance and implement adaptation to growing risks”, deplored United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a press release on the occasion of the publication of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report. for climate adaptation.
Titled “Too little, too slow, climate adaptation failure puts the world at risk,” the report warns of the urgency to act, the funding gap and the limitations of the small steps strategy, which opens on Sunday. November 6, the United Nations International Climate Change Conference (COP 27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. UNEP warns that cyclical crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine or inflation should not justify inaction in adapting to climate change. “People who have become food insecure as a result of these crises would be less at risk if the regions they live in had become more resilient,” said Henry Neufeldt, UNEP researcher and lead author of the report.
perverse effects
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has shown that the world will face serious climate risks by the end of the century, even under low-emission scenarios. And the impact of warming to 1.1°C is already significant. Protracted droughts, like those experienced by the Horn of Africa over the past five years, are destroying crops and leaving millions of people to starvation. Glaciers are retreating, causing both flooding and water shortages. Cyclones have inundated countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Mosquitoes, which transmit diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, are spreading in previously unaffected areas…
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