Imperial researchers respond to the latest UN climate report, an urgent warning about the impact of climate change on people and the planet.

A new United Nations report, developed by 270 scientists from 67 countries, assesses the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, biodiversity and human communities, as well as the ability of the natural world and human societies to adapt to climate change.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II Sixth Assessment Report, titled Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, sets out the latest scientific findings for global governments and policymakers to aid them taking action on climate change.

For the first time, the report includes a detailed overview of the adverse impacts of climate change on mental health, and an emphasis on how misinformation has delayed climate action on an individual and collective level.

Imperial College London experts from different disciplines have been commenting on the findings of the report, explaining its relevance to businesses, society and policymaking.

Dr Nixon Sunny, research assistant in the Centre for Environmental Policy described the report as "the starkest warning yet of the dangers of failing to limit the global average temperature rise to within 1.5°C".

Urging businesses and leaders to act in response to the report, he said: "These looming risks damage societies, businesses, and have the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities across the world. We need to move fast to reduce current emissions, whilst simultaneously removing emissions from the atmosphere using permanent CO₂ removal technologies."

Unique opportunity for healthier, fairer, sustainable cities

Children, women and Indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable, with an increased risk of migration and violent conflict as well as food and water shortages. Karen Makuch Centre for Environmental Policy

The report highlights how rising temperatures, trauma from extreme weather events such as storms and wildfires, and the loss of livelihoods and culture can negatively affect mental health health as well as how these factors interact interact with people’s vulnerabilities and inequalities in socioeconomic status, age, gender, occupation and health.

According to Imperial researchers, taking action to reduce climate change and adapt to its impacts can have a positive effect on mental wellbeing.

Aina Roca Barcelo, a postgraduate researcher at Environmental Epidemiology in Imperial’s School of Public Health, said: "Regrettably, the dialogue around health finds its place on the negotiating tables only when quantifying the negative impacts, and virtually never when proposing solutions and developing mitigation and/or adaptation strategies. It is time that we start to take a health-lens when developing and implementing climate change mitigation and/or adaptation strategies."

Dr Emma Lawrance, Mental Health Innovations Fellow at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, and co-author of the policy briefing paper 'The impact of climate change on mental health and emotional wellbeing', stresses the interlinkages between mental health and other factors in the climate change equation. She said: "The IPCC report emphasises 'win-win' opportunities, for example the need to protect biodiversity, reduce social inequalities and include local communities in decision making and action. Connection with nature, more equal societies and collective action all benefit mental health and human flourishing.

"Embedding mental health expertise in communities so that people can support each other and act together is vital to benefit our health and wellbeing at the same time as safeguarding the health of ecosystems and future generations."

Biodiversity at the heart of climate action

To maximise the benefits that climate mitigation and adaptation can bring, it’s essential that climate actions are aligned with wider societal priorities such as poverty alleviation and reducing inequality. Dr Neil Jennings Grantham Institute

A new summary of evidence for the negative impact of climate change on nature and people is presented in the report. It details the loss hundreds of local species, and the first extinctions driven by climate change. It also highlights that unsustainable land use, deforestation, biodiversity loss and pollution severely impact the ability of ecosystems, communities and individuals to adapt to climate change.

Henry Grub, postgraduate researcher in the Centre for Environmental Policy and Imperial's Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment, says: "The IPCC report confirms that we are not living through a single crisis – but rather a triple-threat of climate, biodiversity, and social crises worldwide. Biodiversity loss globally is a threat to humanity, and will make climate change even worse, creating a vicious cycle. It is imperative that adapting to and mitigating climate change must put biodiversity at its heart, and wholesale changes to reverse the trend of cliff-edge biodiversity decline are needed urgently."

Galina Jonsson, a postgraduate researcher specialising in long-term biodiversity trends at the Grantham Institute, said: "An integrated approach is necessary to realise the full potential of biodiversity to support climate action, as well as to identify, prioritise and implement solutions that deliver benefits on multiple fronts simultaneously. Such changes involve transforming global economic and political structures and societal norms, including subsidies and international trade regulations. However, just as nature must be central to transformative sustainable changes, so must people; otherwise, the already poor and vulnerable risk paying the price for environmental progress."

Although adaptation alone cannot prevent loss and damage to ecosystems and human livelihoods due to climate change, experts say that addressing financial, governance and policy-related constraints using inclusive and integrated long-term planning can still help.

Dr Neil Jennings, Partnership Development Manager at the Grantham Institute, said: "To maximise the benefits that climate mitigation and adaptation can bring, it’s essential that climate actions are aligned with wider societal priorities such as poverty alleviation and reducing inequality."

Dr Bonnie Waring, Senior Lecturer at the Grantham Institute, referenced the tight interlinkages between climate change and biodiversity in the report. She said: "We have a tremendous opportunity to tackle both challenges at once by protecting and restoring natural ecosystems, which lock carbon away from the atmosphere and provide a home for the biodiversity upon which human life depends."

Building food security and water resilience

The report also shows that the increase in weather extremes has exposed millions of people to increased food insecurity, leading to malnutrition in many communities, particularly among Indigenous peoples and low-income households. As well as this, climate change poses severe threats to global water security, with half of the world’s population currently experiencing severe water scarcity for at least some part of the year.

It emphasises the need for policymakers to urgently develop multifunctional ways of managing water systems and increase use of interventions such as peat bogs, mangroves and seagrass fields which are examples of 'nature based solutions' for the impacts of climate change.

Dr Ana Mijic, Reader in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a contributing author to the report, said: "There is a significant role of dealing with future uncertainties through adaptive and collaborative approaches to integrated water systems planning. This could be enabled by the Water Systems Integration modelling framework (WSIMOD) developed in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, which is now tested for integrated urban and catchment planning in collaboration with UK Environment Agency, local planning authorities, water companies and NGOs."

Professor Wouter Buytaert from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering added: "Climate change is now one of the biggest roadblocks to lifting people out of poverty and to building a water resilient society. We need a global concerted effort, not just to build and improve water infrastructure, but also in novel approaches such as nature-based solutions, water systems analysis, and participatory knowledge production.” 

Climate change contributes to humanitarian crises

Calling out the damaging influence that vested interests and deliberate misinformation have had on the public debate is a vital step towards addressing the harm it’s caused and continues to cause Katrine Petersen Grantham Institute

The report declares authoritatively that "climate change is contributing to humanitarian crises" and states that 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change, with severe consequences for gender and social equity.

Karen Makuch, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Law at the Centre of Environmental Policy, commented: "We need, in the immediate term, a more concerted effort to work collectively as an international community towards policies and actions that save lives, now and in the immediate future. Children, women and Indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable, with an increased risk of migration and violent conflict as well as food and water shortages.

"Human rights and justice concerns now need to be at the centre of global climate policymaking. The international legal framework of human rights, enshrining, inter alia, the right to life, the right to health the right to security of persons, the right to self-determination, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the rights of women and the rights of children need to be at the centre of economic, technological, scientific, legal and policy concerns."

Misinformation delays climate action

The impact of misinformation is recognised by IPCC for the first time in this report, noting that it has delayed climate action on an individual and collective level. Decisions to protect the most vulnerable, based on accurate science, are being impeded by deliberate misrepresentation of that science to protect vested interests.

"False narratives can hamper our capacity to cope and act. It is vital that responsible reporting highlights the power of creating hope through climate action at all levels of society," said Dr Emma Lawrance, mental health and climate change expert at Imperial's Institute of Global Health Innovation.

Katrine Petersen, Campaign Manager at Grantham Institute, adds: "By casting doubt on climate science, the deliberate spread of misinformation by vested interests such as fossil fuel companies throughout the last decades has undermined public support for climate action and provided excuses for governments not to act with the urgency that’s needed to rapidly cut emissions and build resilience to climate impacts. Calling out the damaging influence that vested interests and deliberate misinformation have had on the public debate is a vital step towards addressing the harm it’s caused and continues to cause."

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Headline image is www.environmentalgraphiti.org © 2022 All rights reserved. Source: IPCC.