This year (2023) Copernicus, the EU’s climate monitoring agency ,recorded the northern hemisphere’s hottest summer ever. In Greece wild-fires were followed by flooding. Torrential rain visited Bulgaria, Spain, Turkey, England and Scotland. Dr. Frederick Otto of the Grantham Institute & IPCC commented: not much faith in intergovernmental bodies but individual nations are beginning to see they must do something. Antonio Gutierrez, the Secretary General of the UN, said in September: “Our climate is imploding faster than we can cope with”. This summer was the warmest ever recorded in the northern hemisphere. Together with the Forest and Climate Leaders Partnership (FCLP), we will facilitate financing packages to protect and sustainably manage major forest basins, including mangroves, with particular attention to indigenous and local community leadership and knowledge.
One hundred million hectares of healthy and productive land was degraded every year between 2015 and 2019. Forest loss, land degradation and species extinction are inextricably linked. Over 200 million people live in coastal areas in Latin America and the Caribbean alone. They depend on healthy ocean ecosystems, especially coastal ecosystems, for their livelihoods. The region is home to a substantial portion of the world’s marine biodiversity. It hosts over 40% of the world’s nature, 12% of its mangrove forests, 10% of its coral reefs and its largest expanse of wetlands.
As the world warms, ice sheets and glaciers on land melt and flow into the ocean. The ocean itself also warms and expands, as it absorbs significant amounts of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gas effect. These changes cause the sea level to rise.
Sea level rise continues to speed up as human-induced global warming increases. Sea levels were rising at a rate of around 8cm per 100 years in the late nineteenth century, 21cm per 100 years in the mid-twentieth century, and now up to around 32cm per 100 years. Future sea level rise depends on how quickly we reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
However, the time lag between temperature rises and the melting of ice means we are already ‘locked in’ to a certain amount of future sea level rise. In a scenario where emissions are reduced rapidly and the rise in global temperatures stay below 2°C, sea level rise will still reach 29–59 cm in the next hundred years with respect to 1986-2005 levels. This is because the effect of CO2 already in the atmosphere has a time lag; it heats the atmosphere slowly.
If emissions continue as they are, and ice-sheets respond to this in an expected manner, sea levels could rise by up by 1 m by 2100 compared to 1986-2005 levels. This would bring serious risks for coastal regions around the world, including low-lying islands and major cities like Shanghai, Alexandria and Miami. More than half of the world’s largest cities lie along the coast, and just over 1 billion people live in coastal areas within 10 metres of sea level. Adaptation measures can help protect these areas against serious risks of flooding if they go beyond maintaining today’s standards of protection and prepare for rising sea levels
The largest threat of future sea level rise comes from the possibility that the massive ice sheets in the Antarctic and Greenland could melt. In particular, the West Antarctic ice sheet is thought to be vulnerable to collapse. It rests on a bed more than 2 km below sea level and contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by around 3.5 m. In total, there is enough ice on the planet to raise sea levels by 70 m. It is difficult to predict at what level of warming this kind of dangerous change could occur, however the risk grows as global temperatures increase (from the Grantham Institute)
Reducing deforestation, restoring, conserving and better managing natural and productive landscapes are crucial strategies to reduce vulnerability to impacts of climate change and store carbon in the land. In addition, it supports livelihoods, protects ecosystem biodiversity while boosting agricultural productivity for low-carbon and climate-resilient economies and societies at large. At COP26 140 countries with over 90% of the world’s forest, backed with $19.2 billion made a commitment to reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 (Climate Champions)
Oceans play a key role in building resilience to climate change. It regulates the Earth’s climate, provides benefits that help people adapt to climate change impacts, and supports marine life essential for healthy ecosystems. For example, coral reefs support the resilience of 1 billion people and safeguard 25% of ocean life. Yet, the climate crisis and other stressors threaten 90% of reefs by 2050. Innovative finance is urgently needed to accelerate ocean resilience, supporting marine ecosystems and nature (Climate Champions)
Heatwaves in South America, Canada, Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeria, and East Africa’s drought all attributed to climate change
