CLIMATE CHANGE, ITS EFFECTS & SOLUTION Prof. Y.P.Singh Amity University Gwalior

                            

Climate change is already harming people and ecosystems. Its reality can be seen in melting glaciers, disintegrating polar ice, thawing permafrost, changing monsoon patterns, rising sea levels, changing ecosystems and fatal heat waves.

Scientists are not the only ones talking about these changes. From the apple growers in Himachal to the farmers in Vidharbha and those living in disappearing islands in the Sunderbans are already struggling with the impacts of climate change.

 This is just the beginning. We need to act to avoid terrible climate change. No one knows how much warming is "safe".

Early effects of small to moderate warming

• Rise in sea level due to melting glaciers and the thermal expansion of the oceans as global temperature increases.

• Massive release of greenhouse gases from melting permafrost and dying forests.

• A high risk of more extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts and floods. The global incidence of drought has already doubled over the past 30 years.

• Severe regional impacts. Example: In Europe river flooding will increase and in coastal areas the risk of flooding, erosion and wetland loss will increase substantially.

• Natural systems, including glaciers, coral reefs, mangroves, Arctic ecosystems, alpine ecosystems, Boreal forests, tropical forests, prairie wetlands and native grasslands, will be severely threatened.

• The existing risks of species extinction and biodiversity loss will increase.

• The greatest impacts will be on the poorer countries least able to protect themselves from rising sea levels. There will be spread of disease and declines in agricultural production in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

• At all scales of climate change, developing countries will suffer the most.

Solutions for the climate
• Make sure emissions peak in 2015 and decrease as rapidly as possible towards zero after that.
• Developed countries must make cuts of 40 percent on their 1990 carbon emisisons by 2020.
• Developing countries must slow the growth of emissions by 15-30 percent by 2020, with support from industrialised nations.
• Protect tropical forests with a special funding mechanism - forests for climate.
• Replace dirty fossil fuel energy with renewable energy and energy efficiency.
• Reject false solutions like nuclear energy.
Now a Lima Climate Change Conference - December 2014 held & made some decisions & Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, the Minister of the Environment of Peru and the COP President, said: 
Lima has given new urgency towards fast tracking adaptation and building resilience across the developing world—not least by strengthening the link to finance and the development of national adaptation plans.
He said. The Lima Climate Conference achieved a range of other important outcomes and decisions and "firsts" in the history of the international climate process.
• Pledges were made by both developed and developing countries prior to and during the COP that took the capitalization of the new Green Climate Fund (GCF) past an initial $10 billion target.
• Levels of transparency and confidence-building reached new heights as several industrialized countries submitted themselves to questioning about their emissions targets under a new process called a Multilateral Assessment.
• The Lima Ministerial Declaration on Education and Awareness-raising calls on governments to put climate change into school curricula and climate awareness into national development plans.