Synthesis Report by IPCC

In news- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released the final report, known as the Synthesis Report, of its sixth assessment cycle.

Key findings-

Following are the key findings of the report-

The world is on track to breach the 1.5 degree Celsius global warming limit by the 2030s, which would cause irrevocable damage to the planet’s ecosystem and severely impact humans and other living being.
IPCC added that there is still a chance to avert this mass-scale destruction, but it would require an enormous global effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and completely phase them out by 2050.
Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial age while humans have been responsible for virtually all global heating over the last 200 years.
It is essentially a non-technical summary of the previous reports, which were released between 2018 and 2022, and sets out possible policies and measures that might help stave off the worst consequences of climate change.
The new report lays out the present impact of soaring global temperature and imminent ramifications in case the planet continues to get warmer.
Due to the current global warming levels, almost every region across the planet is already experiencing climate extremes, an uptick in deaths due to heatwaves, reduced food and water security and damage to ecosystems, causing mass extinction of species on land and in the ocean.
The report said that vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to climate change are being disproportionately affected.
It added that more than three billion people live in areas that are “highly vulnerable” to climate change — people living in these regions were 15 times more likely to die from floods, droughts and storms between 2010-2020 than those living in regions with very low vulnerability.
Things can get worse if the world crosses the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature limit, a target agreed to in the Paris Agreement. This would result in an unpredictable global water cycle, drought and fires, devastating floods, extreme sea level events and more intense tropical cyclones.
According to the scientists involved in writing the report, India would also face these dire consequences of global warming and needs to take immediate action to curb the temperature.
Given the present scale, scope and pace of global action, it’s most likely that Earth would overshoot this critical warming threshold somewhere in the following decade.
The report categorically states that despite some advancements towards curtailing the greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, “adaptation gaps exist, and will continue to grow at current rates of implementation.”
Some of the barriers to adaptation have been limited resources, lack of private sector and citizen engagement, low climate literacy, lack of political commitment and low sense of urgency.
The Synthesis Report underlines the requirement of climate-resilient development, which is finding ways to adapt to climate change or reduce greenhouse gas emissions that provide wider benefits.
It further mentions that to be effective, these measures must be rooted in our diverse values, world views and knowledge around the globe — including Indigenous knowledge.
Apart from highlighting the urgent need of limiting the use of fossil fuel, the report urges governments and policymakers to increase finance to climate investments, expand the clean energy infrastructure, reduce nitrogen pollution from agriculture, curtail food waste, adopt measures to make it easier for people to lead low-carbon lifestyles and much more.