Melting glaciers, unbearable heat or the crisis in insurance systems and space debris: a month before COP28, a report from the United Nations University warns of six threats to systems essential to human life.
Threats to systems essential to human life are linked to the concept of the climate tipping point, which is being used regularly by scientists this Wednesday. The collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and the Amazon rainforest are just two examples.
The new report proposes the creation of a new category, called ‘risk tipping points’, which focuses on the interaction between nature and man-made systems. For example, the water and food supply system.
“By damaging nature and biodiversity and polluting Earth and space, we are dangerously moving towards multiple risk tipping points, which could destroy the systems on which our lives depend,” said Zita Sebesvari, lead author of the report.
The analysis warns of threats that have been described many times, such as the melting of glaciers, endangering water supplies, or the disappearance of animal species that play a fundamental role in their ecosystems.
But it also highlights risks that are less often mentioned in climate debates.
One of these is the build-up of space debris, which threatens to cause pileups that could make Earth’s orbit unusable for satellites – many of which have warned of meteorological catastrophes.
Another is the threat to the insurance system: as the number of disasters increases, so do prices, and some insurers are even withdrawing from certain areas, leaving people without a safety net.
Another risk is the depletion of groundwater, most of which is used in agriculture to compensate for water shortages during droughts.. In Saudi Arabia, these wells have already dried up, the report says, and India is also on the brink of breaking point.
The authors propose a new approach to analyzing possible responses to these crises, dividing them into two categories: solutions designed to avoid the causes of the problem and solutions designed to adapt to inevitable changes.
COP28 is a UN climate summit that will take place this year in Dubai, between November 30 and December 12.
Source: DN
