Climate Change: It’s not about addressing it, it’s about mitigating it
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| ISCES 2017 featured UNEP and UNFCC |
“People are at stake for sustainable and healthy environment. Here, gathering in Tongji University, our future leaders who will shape our future” – Prof. Zhong Zhihua, President of Tongji University
We are always running out of
time. There are probable chances that the forests are disappearing, earth
temperature is increasing, or the soil is degrading right at the moment we
gather in the auditorium of Tongji University for 2017 International Student
Conference on Environment and Sustainability (ISCES). Carried the theme of “Connecting
People to Nature”, ISCES was held in Shanghai and gathered more than 100
students from all over the world to discuss and solve the environmental problems.
“How many of you feel the
responsibility in protecting the environment?” Clarice Wilson, Acting Chief,
Policy Coordination Office, UN Environment Program started her speech in 5th
of June 2017 back in Tongji University’s auditorium. Her question awakened us
to the enormity of our responsibility in recovering our only planet.
Now humans have to take the debt into
account; The Earth gave us climate change to deal with. Climate Change does
seem as a hot potato on the table and it’s calling for a drastic measures. In
her speech, Clarice stated her worries about the mounting Earth’s temperature
these days. She said that if people keep being unaware about the rise of
Earth’s temperature and keep doing nothing to prevent it, there will be an increase
of carbon emissions by 70% in 2050.
When we’re talking about the
effects of climate change and global warming, we need to look back into the
causes first. For the last decades, urbanization has been one of the reason of
the rising temperature of Earth. Far cry from when humans gather and hunter
foods to keep living, now that technologies is developed well, humans started
building cities and living there. And these urban areas are growing rapidly,
especially in the developing countries, such as countries located in Asia,
Africa, Latin America, The Carribean, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia
(Publication Reference Bureau).
In 2016 alone, it is estimated that
there were as many as 54.5% of world’s population living in urban areas and
along with the development of industry and technology, the number is growing. As
the number is projected to grow up to 60% by 2030 and will make its way up to
70% by 2050, the effort to prevent global warming will definitely cost our arm
and leg.
Clarice Wilson: Toward the Pollution-Free Planet
“By 2050, the number of people
who live in urban cities will be 70% of world population and they will
contribute as much as 70% carbon pollution” explained Clarice Wilson. The
enormous number of urban population means more buildings to be built and more
transportations to be operated. The transportation development alone will be
doubled from 1.2 million to 2.4 million as the population grows.
The increase in population means
more lands to be used to establish industry, settlement, and business
districts. And in the heat of the moment, the lands are converted from
agriculture or forest to provide adequate space for the development. In other
words, urbanization is another change in land use that can affect the climate. Thus,
urban temperatures tend to be warmer due to the high density of materials and the
high density of populated area.
Land use changes can
significantly contribute to overall climate change. On a global scale, carbon
dioxide emissions from land use changes represent an estimated 18% of total
annual emissions; one-third of that from developing countries and over 60% from
the lesser developing countries (The Environmental Literacy Council).
Other than land use change and
deforestation, food loss and waste also emit carbon and greenhouse gases in a
preferably amount to cause climate change. There are about 24% of the produced
foods didn't reach consumer's table or left uneaten by 2016. To make things
even clearer, about 1.3 billion tons, roughly one third of the food produced in
the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted (FAO).
The energy that goes into the
production, harvest, transportation and packaging of wasted food produces more
than 3.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. Global food loss and waste
generate annually 4.4 Giga tons of carbon dioxide, or about 8% of total
anthropogenic greenhouse gasses (GHG) emissions. This means that the
contribution of food wastage emissions to global warming is almost equivalent
(87%) to global road transport emissions (FAO).
With the increasing awareness of
the world on the amount of carbon emissions and greenhouse gasses in the
atmosphere, as well as their danger in causing climate change, the
practitioners gathered in Paris in 2015 to form The Paris Climate Change
Agreement.
Nick Nuttall: The Future of the Paris Climate Change Agreement in a
Changing World
“The question is now scale and also speed if we are to avoid potentially catastrophic climate impacts, hand on a healthy planet to the next generation and seize the opportunity of a different kind of development path”– Nick Nuttall, Director, Communication and Outreach UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC.).
In his speech at 5th
of June 2017, took place in Tongji University, Nick Nuttall explained the
future of Paris Climate Change Agreement. Nick revealed to the audience that
climate change has been a concern for years in UN Environment Program’s
discussion. Drastic times indeed calls for drastic measures, it took about 20
years of discussion to finally draw the world’s attention to work hand in hand
under the aegis of the Paris Agreement.
“The Paris Climate Change
Agreement, my topic today, has an almost equally long genesis – it didn’t just
pop out of the box one winter’s day in 2015 in the French Capital. It took over
20 years with millions of people in that time struggling to bring into being a
universal climate agreement of all nations” –Nick Nuttall.
Paris Agreement has been ratified
universally even before UN Climate Change Conference in 2016 in Marrakech,
Morocco. In other words, sufficient nations had ratified the agreement and
brought it into their national laws.
Until now, there are about 147 countries had ratified the Paris
Agreement with more joining monthly. The agreement is not only applied by
governments at the national level but also at cities, regions, territories,
businesses, inventors and citizens.
With the collaboration of various
parties and real implementation of the agreement, in April 2016, 138.5
gigawatts of renewable power capacity installed worldwide, growing up to 8%
from 127.5 gigawatts in 2015. As an implication of the installation of
renewable power widely, average dollar capital expenditure per megawatt for
solar photovoltaics and wind dropped by 10%. Furthermore, the proportion of
global electricity provided by renewables rose from 10.3% in 2015 to 11.3% in
2016.
Countries have taken the role in
installing renewable energy as a source of their electricity. There is Chile
with its solar power, Morocco with its wind power, India with its Ramanthapuram
solar complex and UK and China with its offshore wind power.
As the implication of the
worldwide movement in renewable energy, The International Energy Agency stated
that the growing penetration of clean energy globally this year as one reason
why greenhouse gas emissions have stayed flat for three years running.
Overall, in energy sector, Paris
Agreement has managed to persuade global citizen to stop using fossil energy as
a source and start using renewable energy instead (solar, wind, river). Indeed,
many private sector oil and gas companies, such as Total and BP have this year
underlined their support for the Paris Agreement.
In economy sector, Paris
Agreement has organized a green financial mechanism called Green Climate Fund.
This fund has supported 8 projects in suppressing carbon emission in developing
countries, such as Egypt, Tanzania and Solomon Islands. Up to now, The Green
Climate Fund has provided support of 2.2 billion dollars to 40 projects related
to climate action.
Since the issuance of the Paris
Agreement, investing in environment development seem as a good choice for large
companies. For the record, new financial instruments are growing such as Green
Bonds; France issued 7.5 billion euros this year and China issued over 15
billion dollars. Even Apple Company issued 1.5 billion dollars to finance
energy for its operation in 2016.
It becomes more attractive when a
club of subnational governments, Under2Coalition, has managed to integrate 165
countries to lower the carbon emission at least 80% by 2050 and not only that,
the Under2Coallition has managed to increase the combined GDP of 165 countries
up to $26 trillion. Even today, the Paris Agreement has attracted more
companies to participate in an international initiative under the post Paris
global climate action agenda aimed at deforestation-free commodity and supply
chains.
It seems that Paris Agreement has
done such a good work in mitigating climate change in the past 2 years.
However, while we thought that Paris Agreement has done best for both worlds,
there is still bad news we have to deal with for years ahead. The bad news is,
even if we add up all the climate action plans of countries, they do not yet
get the world on track to keep the warm below 2 degrees C, remembering that Paris
Agreement aims to limit warming to well below 2 degrees C this century. In
fact, the fact is a year after the Paris Agreement was issued, 2016 was
considered as the warmest year of the century, with an increase in temperature
of 0.06 degrees C since 2015.
Despite of the bad news declared
in the last speech of Nick, we can say that Paris Agreement at least has
brought us to the new framework of development. There are so many data to put
on the table to show how Paris Agreement has guided us in lowering carbon
emission and mitigating climate change for the past 2 years. Nick convinced us
that the action will not stop here, there will be an evaluation about how well
a nation can maintain their carbon emission in certain amount to see how far
the agreement has gone.
Despite of its effect today,
increasing population, globalization and urbanization should be a good
combination against climate change. Nick stated that since the issuance of
those reports, the next important step will be integrating the aims and
ambitions of not only government in national level, but also the ambitions of
private sector. Furthermore, we need to achieve mutual understanding about
climate change and its mitigation between local government and local community.
In short, the future of pollution-free planet will not happen and the Paris
Agreement will not meet its future if global citizen – including government,
private sector, etc – are not going to work hand in hand to mitigate the
climate change.
As a global citizen, there are a
lot of things we can do, it can be as simple as consuming the foods on the
plate without wasting it or turning the lights off when it’s not used. We leave
traces as we’re growing, even when we’re breathing. And every time we leave
traces, or footprint, or ecological footprint, this planet needs to recover
them for us. Therefore, let us leave good trail from now on, so that the planet
doesn’t need to put so much effort in recovering them.
We’re running out of time, and
it’s not about our age; it’s about the Earth’s age. If the Earth has age,
researchers consider it to be on the edge of its age, and when it’s dying there
will be no kind of the same Earth to replace it. So, let us all save the Earth
for our sake, for today’s generation and for the future generation.
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