Adaptation to climate change will no longer be enough says NGO report

Tierney Smith at the website for Responding to Climate Change, or RTCC.org: Much more focus will have to be placed on rehabilitation and compensation for those hit by climate change, as mitigation and adaptation methods fall short, according to an NGO report. What the world will look like with worsening climate change is still largely unknown. But the report says the warning signs of this imagined world are already before us.

It warns that predictions suggest climate change could inflict devastating damage to ecosystems, human life, land and property. These predictions include the destruction of the world’s forests and corals, extreme land degradation and desertification, polar ice melt, storms, floods and drought.

In a joint report by CARE, ActionAid, German Watch and WWF they call for the resultant loss and irreversible impacts of climate change to be addressed quickly – with the world set to overshoot the 2°C threshold, moving instead towards a 4-6°C world.

A world where those in the poorest nations will suffer worst from climate change impacts, which will leave much of Sub-Saharan Africa struggling for food and many Pacific Island completely submerged by water. Loss and damage cannot be avoided, says the report, and the conversations going on amongst politicians and negotiators must reflect this....

Stillaguamish River (South Fork) flood at Granite Falls in Washington, nine feet above flood stage, shot by Walter Siegmund, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license