UN Report Warns Of ‘Increasingly Clear’ Risks Of Climate Change

The draft report, which calls for improved energy efficiency and cleaner energy sources, warns that the nature of the risks of climate change is increasingly clear, though climate change will also continue to “produce surprises”.

Europe faces food price rises and water shortages as well as floods and deadly heatwaves as a result of climate change, the report says.

Other parts of the world will be even harder hit and less able to adapt to the impacts, the IPCC warns. Food shortages and poverty will be exacerbated and could lead to the outbreak of wars, the report says.

It also suggests that people will be forced to flee areas that become too warm, while some species of wildlife face risk of extinction.

The more temperatures rise, the more severe the consequences will be and the harder they will be to adapt to, the report finds.

The report says the world is ill-prepared for risks from a changing climate and also concludes that there are opportunities to respond to such risks, though the risks will be “difficult to manage” with high levels of warming.

It says climate change has already affected agriculture, human health, ecosystems on land and in the oceans, water supplies, and some people’s livelihoods. The striking feature of this impact is that it is occurring from the tropics to the poles, from small islands to large continents, and from the wealthiest countries to the poorest, the report says.

The report, titled Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, from Working Group II of the IPCC, details the impacts of climate change to date, the future risks from a changing climate, and the opportunities for effective action to reduce risks.

A total of 309 coordinating lead authors, lead authors, and review editors, drawn from 70 countries, were chosen to produce the report. They enlisted the help of 436 contributing authors and 1,729 expert and government reviewers.