This landmark report sets out guidelines to all countries around the globe for effective actions that will be successful in tackling the climate crisis.
On 4 April 2022, the UN released its long-awaited report Climate Change 2022: Mitigating climate change [1]. The report comes at a very critical period for the planet and presents solutions to address problems in various sectors including energy, industry, agriculture, land use, and transport.
The report strongly emphasizes that, despite all the actions taken so far, total greenhouse gas emissions have been rising globally in recent years.
As a result, the margins for mitigating the effects of climate change become narrower, and therefore there is a global need for radical changes in order to find solutions to this serious problem and limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C.
Recognising the difficulties that the globe is expected to face in the coming years, the report classifies the actions that need to be taken to limit global warming, based on objective and specialised scientific knowledge and experience.
The report sends a clear and strong message to all countries that we can reducing greenhouse emissions up to a half until 2030.
What is missing is each state’s political will to apply solutions that will bring the desired result, something clearly stated in the report.
The reports also clearly states that there should be a dramatic reduction of fossil fuel consumption, including natural gas (-55% until 2050), if we want to keep the temperature below the rise of 1.5 °C.
Additionally, in order to avoid being entrapped into practices that have high carbon footprint, we should stop investing in new projects involving fossil fuels.
On the contrary, the way forward is to increase funding on energy infrastructure to enable a rapid green transition.
It is also reported that the cost of clean renewable energy technologies has fallen dramatically and the development of climate solutions including solar and wind power, electric vehicles and battery storage has accelerated in recent years. This suggests that the adoption of such technologies is increasingly feasible and cost-effective.
Finally, the report confirms what has already been acknowledged, namely that the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems offers huge mitigation potential through the absorption and removal of carbon from the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, the Republic of Cyprus has still one of the highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions in Europe. In order to change this negative performance and, as a state become part of the solution in the global effort to tackle the climate crisis, the state should take seriously the latest data indicated in the IPCC report and make big, decisive and strategic leaps to achieve a zero emission economy.
[1] IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al Khourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi: 10.1017/9781009157926