Be ready for more climate disasters- Experts warn

Climate scientists are predicting more environment-related disasters if the world continues to drag its feet in addressing the endless carbon dioxide pollution, in science known as Green House Gas emissions.

The United Nations has tasked countries to strive to cut emissions to at least 1.5°C by 2030, but the emergence of heavier floods, severe cyclones, heat waves and droughts threatens this ambition.

The 2024 edition of the UN Environment Programme’s (Unep’s) Emissions Gap Report shows how much higher nations must aim. The environment agency suggests that to get on a least-cost pathway for 1.5°C, emissions must fall 42 per cent by 2030, compared with 2019 levels, and for 2°C, emissions must fall 28 percent by 2030.

However, Amb. Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s Special Envoy for Climate Change and Chair of the Africa Group of Negotiators at the just concluded COP29 UN climate conference, cast a long shadow on the current efforts, advocating for proper investments to avoid this scenario.

“If 1.5 can lead to the devastations that we are seeing everywhere, the heat waves, the droughts, the floods, the cyclones, and all this, what is a world of 3.1 going to look like?” he posed.

He was speaking at a meeting hosted by the Kenya Editors Guild themed: Bridging Climate Change and Development for Equitable Progress: Post-Baku Outlook for Kenya.

According to the UN Emissions Gap Report 2024, looking out to 2035 – the next milestone after 2030 to be included in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) targets – emissions must fall 57 per cent for 1.5°C and 37 per cent for 2°C.

The NDCs represent efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change adopted at the Paris Agreement at the COP21 in 2015 in France. Kenya committed to bear 21 percent, about Sh5.7 trillion of the mitigation costs from domestic sources.

While 79 per cent, an equivalent of Sh21 trillion of this is subject to international support in the form of finance, investment, technology development and transfer, and capacity building.

As greenhouse gas emissions rose to a new high of 57.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023, the cuts required from today are larger; 7.5 per cent must be shaved off emissions every year until 2035 for 1.5°C, the UN says in the emissions gap report.

The world, Amb. Mohamed said has just five years left until the 2030 targets, yet, the global politics is turning more inward-looking as countries embrace nationalism, something he described as incredible.

“And what that means is there is more conservatism, more nationalism, a lot of inward looking, while the issue of climate change and the issues of diversity and others, particularly climate change, requires global cooperation, requires multilateral cooperation,” he noted, emphasising that issues of climate change cannot be solved in a simplistic manner, and termed the findings of the emissions gap report as in reflecting what’s happening in the country.

Early in the year, Kenya experienced devastating floods that left behind a trail of human and animal deaths and destruction of property and plants at a scale never witnessed before. This was after a prolonged drought last year on 2023.