Durban - THE chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hoped that more young African people would get involved as scientists and reviewers.
Dr Hoesung Lee was speaking yesterday at the Durban ICC where he welcomed more than 250 authors from over 60 countries who are in the city this week to map out details of the drafting process for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6): Climate Change 2021. The report would focus on the impacts of climate change on natural and human systems and their vulnerabilities.
“This (first) meeting marks the beginning of a very inclusive process. Our report will be powerful and relevant. The IPCC assessments in the last 30 years have been very instrumental in the development of a global climate change policy,” he said.
Lee said there was also a growing number of IPCC report users from the national government as well as local governments and civil society.
“What’s new now is the emerging sensitivity of businesses to the risk of climate change.
A growing number of publicly-traded corporations are obliged to report on their vulnerability risk to climate change as well as the risks from the implementation of a climate change policy,” said Lee.
He said it was important to also understand the implication of climate change on the economy, in particular the banking sector.
This is directly linked to the stability of financial infrastructure. “I hope that your assessment will shine a new light on these emerging needs,” said Lee to experts and authors.
Lee also highlighted the importance of this meeting taking place in Africa and said climate change was a particular threat to the poor, and the different regions of Africa were all vulnerable.
“But this meeting can serve as a symbol of IPCC engagement with African scientists and policy makers,” he said.
Tsakanani Ngomane, deputy director-general for climate change, air quality and sustainable development with the Department of Environmental Affairs, said South Africa had already been experiencing systematic human-induced climate change.
“Over the interior of South Africa, temperatures were increasing above 2ºC per century. SA temperatures are rising at twice the global rate,” she said.
She said as a consequence of these drastic rates, there have been extreme temperature events which had already increased in frequency and occurrence.
“The frequency and intensity of these extremes is alarming and should be an issue of central concern to the scientific community,” she said.
Youba Sokona, the IPCC’s vice chairperson, said they were in a six-year assessment cycle that started in 2016 and would end in 2022. Sokona added that this was the most ambitious cycle the IPCC had undertaken.
“We have three special reports. One of these is on 1.5ºC global warming that was released last October,” he said.
He said these three reports made up the main document to be released in 2021. The lead authors are expected to be in Durban until Friday contributing to the the IPCC’s sixth assessment report that is expected to touch on gas emissions, climate change and land, oceans and communities as well as the mitigation of climate change.