Climate Change and its Global Effects

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From the course by Yonsei University

Sustainable Development in the 21st Century with Ban Ki-moon

21 оценки

Yonsei University

Sustainable Development in the 21st Century with Ban Ki-moon

21 оценки

The course is designed for people that want to learn about the latest development agenda the international community agreed to achieve by 2030. Structured around the five pillars of Agenda 2030 – people, prosperity, planet, peace and justice, and partnership, students will learn that these pillars are interconnected and need to be integrated in practical policy-making and operational activities for development, in both developed and developing country settings. Following an introductory module on the main concepts of Agenda 2030 and the SDGs, successive modules will provide the foundation behind the SDGs for people, prosperity and planet, peace and partnership. A final module will explore the way forward and provide channels that the young generation can participate to integrate the SDGs in the policy-making of the students’ resident countries. To get a better idea of our course, we welcome you to take a look at our promotional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KATSb73TeB4

From the lesson

Planet

In Week 3, we will have a more detailed look at the scientific evidence that human activities are influencing the Earth at the planetary level. You will be introduced to the concepts of Anthropocene and Planetary Boundaries. The biosphere (all living organisms or “biodiversity”) is arguably just as – or more – important than climate for establishing the environmental conditions we enjoy on Earth, but receives much less attention. Furthermore, we will be examining the mitigation and adaptive options, on the local and global scales, in response to reduced environmental sustainability. Additionally, we will look at the international agreements for climate change and how they seek to meet the goals of the SDGs. Using current global environmental challenges, we will discuss ways in which communities and societies have utilized indigenous knowledge, scientific evaluations, technological innovations, societal regulations and laws, environmental monitoring, and policy prescriptions in environmental management at various scales.

Climate Change and its Global Effects7:45

Climate Change and the Paris Agreement Part I9:40

Climate Change and the Paris Agreement Part II7:11

Meet the Instructors

Ban Ki-moon
Distinguished Chair Professor
Institute for Global Engagement and Empowerment

Climate change is the ultimate nexus issue.

It's impacted by a full range of issues,

and in turn it impacts just about everything.

While working at the United Nations on climate change,

not a day went by when I didn't engage with security actors,

humanitarian actors, human rights actors.

Think of air pollution,

and the countries and the cities that are struggling with air pollution.

If you can address climate change, the impacts of,

on particulate matter, and on a population's daily life changes directly.

But less clear for many people around

the world are the links to issues that seem far away.

Sea level rise, and yet tens of millions of people

live on shorelines that are affected by climate change today,

and it'll be even more affected tomorrow.

And that is even before varied weather impacts those populations directly.

One of the areas that is probably least understood,

but is increasingly clear is that climate change is affecting our security environment.

If we seek a more peaceful and secure world,

we have to address climate change.

Currently, today, in the Middle East,

conflict is fueled by climate change.

In Africa, the same is true in Central Asia.

This is only a taste of things to come for virtually every region in the world.

So climate change is a nexus issue that is impacted by this range of other issues,

but addressing climate change will help us to address all those other concerns.

Global warming or rather climate change,

which in fact is not just about the warming,

but the variability of the weather is impacting people all over the world today.

It is increasing with every passing year as we pass through new records of heat,

new records of cold,

new records of weather variability.

The role of human activity is central,

and this has been one of the key conclusions of all the world's scientists,

working together through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It has been conclusively established

that human activity is the main cause of climate change.

The days of debate over whether or not humans were causing climate change is over.

Every serious scientist in the world has signed on to

the proposition that human activity is affecting our climate,

and therefore, the only way to have solutions is for humans to change their activity.

I wish that the future was really 50 years from now,

or even 30 years from now.

The impacts of global warming,

and of climate change are immediate,

but they will grow with time.

For every year that we don't address the climate challenge,

the impacts will be greater,

and will cost more to remedy in the future.

Increasingly, we will see food scarcity in

different parts of the world as the rains change,

and especially agriculture dependent economies will suffer.

Africa is a continent of great concern.

What could be a breadbasket for the world could become

a source of great problems in terms of producing enough food,

but we're also looking at serious water scarcity.

Every major river system is fed by glacial melt around the globe.

As the glaciers are melting today,

we're seeing increased flooding,

but that flooding will turn to drought,

and scarcity of water within a matter of years in some places,

and decades in other.

In a place like Peru in South America,

that depends on glacial melt,

a city of Lima,

Peru of over 10 million people is in a desert.

When the water stop flowing down from the Andes,

what will those people,

those 10 million people in one national capital do for their water source?

2030 is one of the milestones for measuring climate change,

but also for measuring the actions to combat climate change.

It's just far enough out that we could see the types of

transitions in our economies really come to fruition,

and make a full impact on the global climate system.

But some of the impacts that we already know,

that we're already locked into are sea level rise.

A lot of low lying populations,

whether it's from Bangladesh to London to Shanghai to Miami in the United States,

are currently impacted, but by 2030,

we will see parts of those cities that will be unusable in their current form.

Also, by 2030, we will see direct impacts on our food systems,

and on our water provision.

The competition for scarce water is already driving security dynamics in Central Asia,

and in the Middle East.

Today, people look at the conflict in Syria,

and they see a competition,

they see geopolitical forces,

but what is often ignored is

the fundamental underpinning of the extended drought which caused people to

move in Syria that started the chain of

events that led to the humanitarian disaster that we now see.

By 2030, we could expect to see similar dynamics in places

that today are peaceful while there is enough water and enough food,

but when we start to run short,

who knows how many of those places may look like Syria today?

The Kyoto Protocol was

the first international legal instrument that

sought to directly curtail greenhouse gases,

and increase countries' resilience to climate change.

It was a first attempt by the global community to have legal limits on greenhouse gases.

The challenge that Kyoto Protocol faced was that not all nations had signed on.

Large developing countries were exempted from many of the provisions,

and large developed countries like the United States chose not to sign on.

So, the Kyoto protocol,

while it created many instruments for addressing climate change, financial instruments,

negotiated systems for dealing with climate change,

what it could not do was achieve the universality

necessary to address the full scope of the problem.

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