Climate change, overexploitation of nature and pollution are becoming increasingly threatening. Scientists are calling for fundamental changes – but are also highlighting positive developments. Scientists are urgently calling for a change of course to prevent living conditions on Earth from deteriorating catastrophically. If the economy continues to be driven by the principle of "business as usual", enormous costs for people, the environment and the economy are looming, according to the new global environment outlook of the United Nations, which was presented on Tuesday at the headquarters of the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi.
But there's also some good news: there is still a chance for a turnaround – provided that a comprehensive transformation takes place to protect the climate, ecosystems and biodiversity. Pollution is the world's largest risk factor for disease and premature death; nine million deaths per year are attributable to environmental pollution, the experts write. 287 scientists from various disciplines across 82 countries contributed to the report, having evaluated more than 800 studies.
"But the costs of inaction are far greater"… read the full article at faz.net
The seventh report, published under the title "A Future We Choose", is the result of the work of 287 interdisciplinary scientists from 82 countries and represents the most comprehensive scientific assessment of the global state of the environment ever undertaken.
What's new in this report?
The report shows that investments in a stable climate, healthy nature and soils, and a pollution-free environment can generate trillions of dollars in additional global GDP annually, prevent millions of deaths and lift hundreds of millions of people out of hunger and poverty in the coming decades.
Continuing along current development pathways, on the other hand, would bring catastrophic climate change, the destruction of nature and biodiversity, severe land degradation and desertification, and persistent deadly pollution – all at enormous cost to people, the planet and the economy. The report shows, however, that the world can take a different, better path. This requires a holistic approach that involves the whole of society and all levels of government to transform the systems of economy and finance, materials and waste, energy, food and the environment. This is supported by behavioural, social and cultural changes, including respect for indigenous and local knowledge.
Although there are initial costs, the economic costs of inaction are far greater and the long-term returns of transformation are clear: global macroeconomic benefits will begin to become visible around 2050, rising to 20 trillion US dollars per year by 2070 and continuing to grow thereafter.
The report calls on all actors to acknowledge the urgency of the global environmental crises, to build on the progress made over recent decades, and to jointly design and implement integrated policies, strategies and measures to create a better future for all.
In Austria, the COIN study (Steininger et al. 2015) represented the first comprehensive quantification of the costs of climate impacts in Austria, projecting annual costs of over €5 billion by the middle of the century. Due to unquantified impact chains, however, uncertainty remains, which can be reduced through further studies. Since then, models and approaches have been further developed across all impact areas to provide more precise and comprehensive data. A consistent integration of these impact areas, however, is still outstanding.
Since then, approaches and models have been further developed for Austria across all impact areas, meaning that more comprehensive quantifications of climate impact costs and various adaptation measures are now available on a more reliable and higher-resolution data basis. A consistent integration of these impact areas has not yet been undertaken. Methodologically, there have also been significant advances in recent years in the areas of distributional effects, scenario narratives and synthesised states of knowledge. Deepening work in these areas therefore proves to be a policy-relevant research question for the follow-up project COIN 2.0.
