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Climate Change is an existential threat to the Caribbean #1point5toStayAlive is a Panos Caribbean initiative to help make the Caribbean's case for 1.5°C. Since 2009, Small Island Developing States and many others have been calling for limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels to prevent the worst of climate change impacts. The inclusion of a 1.5°C temperature limit in the 2015 Paris Agreement was a major victory for vulnerable countries. |
#1point5toStayAlive Frontpage News
What Islands Want: build resilience and recognise “loss and damage”
PRESS RELEASE. Bonn, Germany. 14 November 2017.
With 20,000 participants coming from all corners of the world and with literally hundreds of meetings, panel discussions and side events taking place each day over more than two weeks, there are many important issues being debated and negotiated at a global gathering such as the Climate Change Conference currently taking place in Germany.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
In the eye of the storm: small island states call for action at climate change summit
Irwin Loy
IRIN, 7 November, 2017
Salome Raqiyawa has witnessed three life-changing calamities in a single year. For her, climate change is more than CO2 emissions, scientific projections and grave predictions for tomorrow: It’s her only explanation for what’s happening now to her tiny village perched along the side of a highway on Fiji’s main island.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
Why the Post-Paris Climate Challenge Is Even Harder Than We Thought
Fred Pearce
Yale Environment 360, 7 November, 2017
As international negotiators convene in Bonn, they must confront the stark conclusion of a new UN report: The national commitments under the Paris Agreement will not come close to providing the emissions reductions needed to avoid the most severe effects of climate change.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
The reality of climate change
United Nations Development Programme
November 2017
Primrose Thomas’ home was destroyed along with 90 percent of the houses and buildings in Barbuda. Powerful hurricanes washed away coastal villages and pristine beaches, carrying off the belongings and life memories of thousands of people here and across the Caribbean.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
The COP23 climate change summit in Bonn and why it matters
Damian Carrington
The Guardian, 5 November, 2017
Halting dangerous global warming means putting the landmark Paris agreement into practice – without the US – and tackling the divisive issue of compensation.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
Climate Science Special Report
United States Government Global Change Research Program
Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume I, 3 November 2017
This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
People in poorer countries five times more likely to be displaced by extreme weather
OXFAM
Uprooted by Climate Change Report, 2 November 2017
People in low and lower-middle income countries were five times more likely to be forced from their homes by “sudden-onset” weather disasters, like floods and storms, than people in richer countries, according to Oxfam.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
The Fiji UN Climate Summit 2017, COP23: what is at stake in Bonn?
Don Lehr, Lili Fuhr, Liane Schalatek
Heinrich Böll Foundation, 1 November 2017
The UN climate summit COP 23 will convene from 6 to 17 November 2017 in Bonn, Germany, under the presidency of the government of Fiji. This article provides an overview of key issues at stake and a summary of our expectations for the COP 23. It does not claim to be complete and is necessarily biased towards the issues that the authors and the Heinrich Böll Foundation follow more closely and consider relevant for the overall debate.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
Climate change isn’t just hurting the planet – it’s a public health emergency
Christiana Figueres
The Guardian, 31 October 2017
When the doctor tells you that your cholesterol is too high, you tend to listen and change your diet. When the world’s climate scientists tell us that temperatures are rising to dangerous levels, we should heed their advice. It’s time to give up climate change, it’s bad for our health.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
In Defense of the 1.5°C Climate Change Threshold
Lauren Legarda
Project Syndicate, 23 October 2017
According to a recent paper in the journal Nature, the world’s remaining “carbon budget” – the amount of carbon-dioxide equivalents that can be emitted before breaching the 1.5°C warming threshold – is somewhat larger than was previously thought. But this is no reason for complacency.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
Climate change in the Caribbean – learning lessons from Irma and Maria
Dr Michael Taylor
The Guardian, 6 October 2017
Alongside other emerging climate patterns, there is a strong case to be made that there is something unfamiliar about the Caribbean’s climate today. We are seeing repeated and prolonged droughts, an increase in the number of very hot days, intense rainfall events causing repeated localised flooding, and rising sea levels that are consuming the beautiful beaches on which tourism in our region depends.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
2018 - COP24: The Caribbean's Struggle to Stay Alive
Climate change is real, an indisputable fact that people across the globe have already experienced, given that extreme phenomena are now common, while their impact is greater.
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Science and geophysical evidence not only point to this change, they stress it. In fact, the term climate change is no longer really pertinent, as this disruption in climatic patterns is already part of our lives and not some forecasted occurrence that might be avoided.
What we can do, what we are called to do, is to simultaneously alleviate or mitigate the impact of global warming to date and engage in concrete measures to contain any further heating of the atmosphere and the oceans.
This is all the more urgent as the impacts we are already experiencing result from an increase of roughly 1 degree above pre-industrial temperatures.
The 1.5° target is already a major concession
This means that the 1.5° target fixed by the Paris Agreement (2015) as a tentative optimal goal is already a major concession, for it entails significantly greater impacts, both in number and in severity, than now accepting as it does a further rise in temperature albeit limited to half a degree.
Hence, the 1.5° target does not mean an improvement on current conditions – it simply means containing the worsening of these conditions. But these will get worse, meaning that the impacts will be more devastating.
This is all the more certain as the 1.5° target refers to a planetary average, which masks regional disparities, whether in terms of differences in temperature levels or impacts due to the general warming.
In this context, the specific circumstances of small island developing states (SIDS) give rise to unique vulnerabilities, as evidenced in recent events and in the limitations they face in terms of response capacities, namely due to limited finances.
For us in the Caribbean, climate change signifies stronger hurricanes, more drought and resulting water shortages, a rise in sea level, heat waves, and warmer days and nights.
It is important to stress that, though the devastation wrought by hurricanes is more spectacular and hence more newsworthy, the impact of droughts is equally damaging in terms of food security, while an increase in heat waves and the number of hotter days and nights will affect – are already affecting – people’s health and wellbeing.
- Category: The Case for 1.5°C
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