The climate crisis is worsening everywhere, to unprecedented levels… On August 9, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reiterated the urgency of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions in a reporting on intensifying and accelerating climate change.
This was only the first part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report, a major update of scientific knowledge on climate change that the expert group had not done since 2014. The rest arrives this Monday noon with the publication of the second part*, this time focusing on the issue of the impacts of climate change and how to prepare for it. Clearly, this Monday, we are going to talk about “adaptation” to climate change. 20 minutes deciphers the major issues
What do we mean by adaptation?
“There are many definitions,” begins Alexandre Magnan, researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) and who contributed to this new report. Before proposing to choose one, very simple. But, clearly: “adaptation seeks to reduce climate risks, today and tomorrow”. “The challenge is therefore to be able to be resilient in the face of extreme events that affect you (cyclones, floods, drought), but also to anticipate more gradual climate changes,” he explains.
We also need to agree on what we mean by climate risks. It’s not just about assessing the probability that an extreme event (cyclone, drought, flood, etc.) will hit you hard. Alexandre Magnan adds, in the equation, the notions of “exposure” and “vulnerability”, “that is, the characteristics which mean that a society, by the way it has developed, will be exposed to this climatic hazard and will suffer more or less strong consequences”. Adaptation is therefore at the crossroads of all these concepts, so much so that its field of intervention is very broad, “This ranges from storm warning systems to the restoration of ecosystems, including changes in economic activities, places to live etc”, lists the IDDRI researcher.
What will the Giec tell us this Monday?
This report, more precisely its “summary for decision-makers” – a summary intended for political leaders which accompanies each publication of the IPCC – is in the process of being approved, line by line, by the representatives of 200 countries meeting behind closed doors since February 14th. And, until the conference this Monday noon, the content is subject to a strict embargo.
However, on June 23, AFP had access to and published a preliminary version of the report that the IPCC is about to publish “and whose conclusions should not change”, estimated the press agency at the time. The report drawn up on these 4,000 pages was overwhelming. Water shortage, exodus, malnutrition, extinction of species… The IPCC estimated that life on Earth, as we know it, will inevitably be transformed by climate change, probably well before 2050.
Alexandre Magnan does not make a scoop of it. “Climate risks are increasing on a planetary scale, this point is no longer discussed,” he says. We can already see the impacts of climate change on a number of ecosystems (coral reefs, permafrost, coastal erosion, etc.). “But this new report is not just about determining the threats that hang over us,” he continues. It also discusses the concrete responses to be provided. “A chapter that remains to be discovered in large part this Monday.
Why does adaptation often go under the radar?
This is obvious in climate finance, in particular through the 100 billion dollars that the countries of the North had promised to mobilize each year, from 2020, for the countries of the South, during COP15 in Copenhagen (2009) . Not only has the amount not been reached to date, “but to date, aid is directed much more towards mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions) than adaptation (to the current and coming from climate change), regrets Fanny Petitbon, advocacy manager at Care France. The Paris agreement, however, required a balance between the two. »
How to explain it? “The choice was made for a long time to focus on mitigation, thinking that we would thus avoid having to consider adaptation”, says Fanny Petitbon. A strategy that we know no longer holds today. “The impacts of climate change are already affecting us, in particular the countries of the South, the least emitters and yet the most exposed, she continues, voting there one of the reasons why the countries of the North are reluctant to allocate funds to adaptation. “They are uncomfortable because they are faced with their responsibilities. »
Eight hundred (new) million dollars were promised at COP 26 in Glasgow, this fall, to the countries of the South for this adaptation. “But we are still far from the 300 billion dollars that the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) considers necessary to raise per year, by 2030”, compares Fanny Petitbon. She then hopes that the IPCC report will be one more call to speed up adaptation. “But let him also point out the limits, especially in the territories where the populations will have no choice but to migrate**”, she adds.
Why is adaptation not an option in France either?
Episodes of drought threatening agricultural production and degrading forests, conditions conducive to fires moving north and arriving earlier in the year, reduced snow cover jeopardizing the economy of the mountains…” Europe and France know and will know in the next ten years these impacts of climate change”, recall Alexandre Magnan and other researchers in a post published this Friday morning.
An invitation therefore to take this issue head-on. It starts, listening to Vivian Depouès, project manager “adaptation to climate change” at the Institute of Economics for Climate (I4CE), among the authors. “Adaptation was at the heart of the Assises de la forêt [qui vient de se conclure]the late frost episode, last April, led to a reform of agricultural insurance currently being adopted and major cities are also taking up the subject”, he says with satisfaction.
But the observation, widely shared, is that France is not yet up to the challenges. Vivian Depouès points out in particular the few discussions still on the level of adaptation to aim for where the issue is taken into account. “For the first time, the new thermal regulations for housing take into account the criterion of “summer comfort”, he illustrates. But the reference level taken is that of the 2003 heat wave when those to come are potentially much more intense. Above all, the I4CE researcher regrets that adaptation is still “off the radar” in many of the sectors concerned. “The modernization of transport networks, the energy renovation of housing, the development of new districts…”, he lists.
We need a strong “political moment” on adaptation in France”, “from the start of the five-year term”, ask the authors of the post. Good news: “we have an increasingly precise idea of what should be included in adaptation policies… and it is not necessarily more expensive”, assures Vivian Depouès.