date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 14:58:00 EDT from: PARRYML@aol.com subject: NATURE:IMPORTANT to: mtjl.jei@ucl.ac.uk, m.hulme@uea.ac.uk, nwa1@soton.ac.uk, arnell61@btinternet.com, r.nicholls@mdx.ac.uk Mike,Nigel,Robert and Matt: I have revised the message below, because the attached file will not send. I am therefore pasting it to this e-mail: I have just received this from Nature. Bold indicates where they would like more. I will aim to draft inserts tomorrow afternoon; BUT, before then, could you please help with some ideas [a) on reducing vulnerability and b) on next steps in the setting of targets - tho not at B. Aires as the editor suggests]. Robert and Nigel: note that I know the numbers in the tabele need to be changed. Thanks and regards, Martin from Nature: New agenda required for climate management Martin Parry, Nigel Arnell, Mike Hulme, Robert Nicholls and Matthew Livermore. The world is far more vulnerable to the threat of climate change than is suggested by the emissions targets currently being discussed. International negotiations resume in Buenos Aires next month, but a far more radical agenda is required. In Kyoto last December, at the third conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, targets were agreed for reductions in 'greenhouse' gases by the 38 countries who have signed the convention. On 2 November in Buenos Aires, negotiators will reconvene at the Framework Convention's fourth conference to agree the mechanisms and a timetable for implementation. We shall be hearing a good deal about trading permits, compliance and enforcement in the weeks to come. But in reality, the control on global warming that can be achieved on the current agenda is limited. We urgently need to reduce our vulnerability to impacts from climate change, for example through crop breeding to offset yield losses and efficient irrigation to counter water shortages. Author, please say how you think this reduction could be achieved, as specifically as possible (approx. 100 words). Adaptations of this kind, as well as climate-change mitigation, will be needed in a package of responses to climate change that is much wider than that being discussed at Buenos Aires. Author: please add a paragraph here to say what you think specifically should be discussed at Buenos Aires to address the problem you've identified (approx. 200 words). The Kyoto Protocol last December is an agreement to a 5.2 per cent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by about 2010 (relative to 1990), and constant emissions thereafter. But these targets only relate to so-called Annex 1 countries (38 industrialized nations), which together account for about 57 per cent of present global carbon emissions but which will produce only 25 per cent of emissions growth over the next 20 years. Most future growth in emissions is expected to occur in the fast-developing countries of Asia and Latin America, which are not signatories to the Framework Convention. As a consequence, the Kyoto target does relatively little to combat the rate of climate change. The warming expected by 2050, without any deliberate mitigation, is currently estimated (author: please provide reference) by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) at about 1.4 °C with respect to the 1961-90 average. About 0.25 °C of this has already been realized since? (Author, do you mean since 1961-90? Please insert date.) Model predictions (reference, or say "our") suggest that fully implemented Kyoto targets would reduce this global warming in 2050 only by about 0.05 °C. Even substantially more radical targets, such as a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from Annex-1 countries, would reduce only a further 0.1 °C by 2050. The impact of climate change will be serious whatever emissions target is agreed. To take an example, the number of people put at risk of hunger, water shortage or coastal flooding during storms as a result of projected climate changes is barely touched by the targets under discussion at Buenos Aires, even if full implementation of the targets is agreed there. The numbers given in the table are derived from impact models reported at Kyoto (reference). Although, for example, about 50 million additional people could be flooded every year during storms resulting from sea-level rise due to climate change without any mitigation, perhaps one million might avoid such flooding as a result of achieving the Kyoto target. The Framework Convention calls on signatories to take action to safeguard food security, ecosystems and sustainable development from dangerous levels of climate change. The current target does not do this. This does not mean that we should despair, but it emphasizes two things. First, Kyoto and Buenos Aires are only the first steps in a process that must involve much greater reduction in emissions and also, crucially, the participation of developing countries. In this respect, the achievements of the industrialized countries at Kyoto, if ratified, are important in providing a lead that will encourage others to follow. Second, mitigation by reducing greenhouse emissions cannot be the entire response to the threat posed by global climate change. Given the long history of past emissions from industrialized countries and the inertia of the climate system, we are committed to experiencing a substantial amount of further global warming even if we implement huge emissions cuts. Martin Parry and Matthew Livermore are in the Jackson Environment Institute, University College London, 5 Gower Street, London WC1E 6HA; Nigel Arnell is in the Department of Geography at the University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ; Mike Hulme is at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, and Robert Nicholls is at The Flood Hazard Research Centre, Middlesex University, Enfield EN3 4SF, UK. They are lead authors of the IPCC. Impacts estimated for the year 2050 additional people (millions) at risk of: Emissions scenario global warming (°C) with respect to 1961-90 water shortage sea-level rise hunger due to global warming unmitigated 1.39 1,465 50 22 Kyoto 1.33 1,465 49 20 20% reduction 1.22 1,321 48 17 30% reduction 1.19 1,321 47 16