Working together, countries around the world have the money and means to prevent catastrophic global warming – but current action and pledges are not enough to tackle the effects or keep warming below 1.5C, reports the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In its final report for a number of years, the IPCC highlights not only the need for an urgent and rapid decline in greenhouse gas emissions, but also the positive outcomes of such action on human health, not just the planet’s.

‘Mainstreaming effective and equitable climate action will not only reduce losses and damages for nature and people, it will also provide wider benefits,’ said IPCC chair Hoesung Lee. 

The panel notes that many actions required to mitigate the effects of climate change offer multiple other benefits, including lower air pollution, active mobility – through better infrastructure to encourage walking and cycling over driving – and a move towards healthier diets.

While it cannot fully predict the cost-benefit analysis of all mitigation measures, the report cites, with medium confidence, that the economic benefits for human health from better air quality would equal or exceed the cost of implementation.

However, the report also highlights that ‘some future changes are unavoidable and/or irreversible’ – but can still be limited by ‘deep, rapid and sustained’ reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions. 

To keep to the long-held goal of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, emissions should already be decreasing, and be cut by almost half by 2030. Globally, emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) – the primary greenhouse gas emitted by human activity and industry – rose 0.9% in 2022.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said: ‘The climate timebomb is ticking. But today’s report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate timebomb. It is a survival guide for humanity.’

The report brings together the vast body of work created during the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment cycle, including three major reports by its three working groups. The first, published in 2021, focused on the physical science behind climate change, and stated for the first time it was ‘unequivocal’ that human activity was leading to a warming world. Guterres said the report was a ‘code red’ for humanity.

The second instalment focused on the effects of climate change on communities and identified the most vulnerable areas, followed by the third report focusing on reducing emissions and climate change mitigation.

Today’s Synthesis Report aims to distil all of the science into a digestible format for businesses and policy makers to ensure action is taken.

Equity, climate justice, social justice and inclusion are championed as being vital for enabling ambitious mitigation actions and climate resilient development, but at present significant emissions and adaptation gaps remain. As is well-documented, those contributing the least to global emissions are often at the forefront when facing the effects of climate change. 

Speaking at an Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit briefing on the report, Julia King, chair of the Climate Change Committee adaptation sub-committee and the Carbon Trust, said: ‘Nearly half the world’s population now live in places vulnerable to climate impacts; floods, fires, drought, extremes of heat and cold are affecting us all, everywhere.

‘We need to adapt here at home, to protect our transport, coastline, homes and agriculture. But we need to help poorer nations to adapt as well. The IPCC spells out the need for financial support from the richest to the poorest.’ 

Co-author Christopher Trisos said: ‘The greatest gains in wellbeing could come from prioritising climate risk reduction for low-income and marginalised communities, including people living in informal settlements. Accelerated climate action will only come about if there is a many-fold increase in finance. Insufficient and misaligned finance is holding back progress.’

At Copenhagen’s Cop15 in 2009, countries agreed to raise $100bn a year in finance for poorer nations by 2020. That target has yet to be achieved.

However, adaptation is required not only to cope with changing weather patterns, but across energy, industry and transport sectors.

The report notes that limiting global warming caused by human activity will require net zero CO2 emissions, and that projected emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure would leave the goal of 1.5C out of reach.

While the widespread use of and improvements in renewable energy will be the bedrock of this chance, the report adds that carbon dioxide removal methods, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), will be necessary to achieve net zero. CCS has yet to be achieved on an industrial scale, but chemical company Ineos announced a significant step forward in the technology earlier this month.

In a summary of the report, the panel writes: ‘There is sufficient global capital to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions if existing barriers are reduced. Increasing finance to climate investments is important to achieve global climate goals. Governments, through public funding and clear signals to investors, are key in reducing these barriers. Investors, central banks and financial regulators can also play their part.

And while without rapid and significant reductions in greenhouse gases it is likely warming will breach 1.5C, that is not a point of no return – global temperatures could still be reduced beyond that point by ‘achieving and sustaining net negative CO2 emissions’.

However, the authors do state with high confidence that sea level rise is unavoidable for centuries to millennia due to deep ocean warming and ice sheet melt that is already underway. 

Rising temperatures also increase the risk of irreversible biodiversity loss and species extinction.

Conservation, protection and restoration of the natural environment – seas, forests and other vital ecosystems – will also provide adaptation and mitigation benefits for humans. Reducing deforestation in tropical rainforests offers the most benefits.

IPCC chair Lee concludes: ‘This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.’

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