The new IPCC Working Group II Report Highlights How Gambling on Overshoot is Pushing the Planet Past a Point of No Return.
The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on its Sixth Assessment Report on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Working Group II) shows that climate change is already causing severe and permanent loss and damage to humans and nature.
The analysis "Beyond safe limits" by the Center for International Environmental Law and the Heinrich Böll Foundation examines the Working Group II report with specific attention to its findings and relevance to "overshoot" scenarios, technologies and approaches common to these scenarios, and the impacts of climate change and climate action on human rights, indigenous rights and social justice.
The analysis highlights three critical messages that emerge from the Working Group II report:
1) Even a temporary overshoot of the 1.5°C limit is exceptionally dangerous and would cause irreversible damage for centuries to millennia;
2) Approaches that rely on unproven risk technologies, such as geoengineering, to reverse or mask the overshoot may prove ineffective and lead to further disastrous consequences;
3) Climate change responses, including adaptation, must integrate social justice and equity and place indigenous/local knowledge at the centre.
Recognition of these critical messages is important both for a proper understanding of the Working Group II report itself and for assessing the mitigation options that will be addressed in the forthcoming IPCC Working Group III report.
