The report equips policymakers with the latest and most pivotal climate science research from the previous 18 months, synthesised to help inform negotiations at COP28 and policy implementation through 2024 and beyond. Simon Stiell, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary says: “The 10 New Insights in Climate Science report provides an essential tool for decision makers at a critical time in the climate calendar each year. Scientific findings from reports like these should inform the ambitious and evidence-based action plans needed in this critical decade of accelerated climate action.”
The 10 full list of insights:
- Overshooting 1.5°C is fast becoming inevitable. Minimising the magnitude and duration of overshoot is essential.
- A rapid and managed fossil fuel phase-out is required to stay within the Paris Agreement target range.
- Robust policies are critical to attain the scale needed for effective carbon dioxide removal (CDR).
- Over-reliance on natural carbon sinks is a risky strategy; their future contribution is uncertain.
- Joint governance is necessary to address the interlinked climate and biodiversity emergencies.
- Compound events amplify climate risks and increase their uncertainty.
- Mountain glacier loss is accelerating.
- Human immobility in areas with climate risks is increasing.
- New tools to operationalise justice enable more effective climate adaptation.
- Reforming food systems can contribute to just climate action.
Professor Laura Pereira from the Wits Global Change Institute, who contributed to the report and who is presenting at COP28 says: “Given the lack of mitigation action to date, inadequate climate commitments by developed countries, and a development model that remains coupled to carbon emissions, exceeding 1.5C is indeed fast becoming inevitable (Insight 1). However, now is not the time to succumb to a feeling of hopelessness in the face of powerful drivers leading the world towards the edge of a precipice that will see countless lives lost, homes and ancestral lands destroyed, and species never to be seen again. Rather, this is the time to find the transformative pathways that are needed to get onto a better trajectory for people and planet.”
The scientific insights of the report function as indispensable evidence for decision makers in business and policy, equipping them with the latest climate science to facilitate informed, effective decision-making on holistic climate and nature solutions, especially against the backdrop of the inaugural Global Stocktake at COP28, which underscores the pressing need for transformative actions to fulfil the Paris Agreement’s ambitions.
The report findings underscore the looming inevitability of overshooting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C global warming target, emphasising the urgency of a rapid and managed fossil fuel phase-out.
Pereira comments:”Some of the other insights offer important aspects that need to be considered as we confront this challenge head-on. Insight 5 emphasises how the climate and biodiversity crises are fundamentally interconnected and have to be addressed together. Insight 10 talks to the critical need for JUST food system transformations that can contribute to climate action,