IPCC: More work to be done to avoid disaster

The third and final section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report was released this past week. 

A wide-ranging review of climate science that draws on the incisive knowledge of thousands of scientists, the report pleads gloomily with governments the world over to tackle the issue of climate change.

The report does not shy away from the fact that climate impacts on Africa will be brutally unforgiving even if the continent most probably emits the least greenhouse gases. 

Outlining tools that can be used to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, it proffers renewable energy generation, energy efficiency, alternatives to dirty energy, and ingenious ways to remove carbon dioxide from air as plausible options.

It also arrives at the conclusion that while growing forests and preserving soils will be necessary, this cannot counteract continued emissions for fossil fuels. 

The Ugandan government and its partners have in recent times made tree-planting the centrepiece of the country’s climate crisis response.

Uganda also looks set to be steeped in fossil fuels after recently signing on the dotted line of a Final Investment Decision (FID). 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group 3 report, however, warns that such new fossil fuel infrastructure will push global temperatures above the 1.5C limit countries consented to at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, last November.

The third instalment of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report sets pathways and policy choices governments can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

The first section—whose findings were made public in August of 2021—made clear the irreversibility of human-induced global warming. 

The second instalment, which arrived at the backend of February, detailed the catastrophic impacts of human actions.

The three strands will be synthesised and published in October for policymakers to pore over at COP27 this November in Egypt.