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When it comes to solving Earth’s climate crisis, the agricultural and forestry sectors are some of the hardest areas to change, yet a new report suggests that these areas will play a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The latest report by U.N Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ChangeThe following report, published earlier this week, summarizes recent climate change findings and suggests possible solutions. Brent SohngenProfessor of The Ohio State University offers environmental and resource economics. was lead author of the report’s section on agriculture, which spanned about 130 pages of the 3,000 page document.
Sohngen’s portion covers how agriculture, forests and related land use can contribute to both climate change and climate mitigation, or the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
“The key message is that there are a lot of actions in the agricultural land-use sectors that people around the world can undertake to mitigate climate change,” said Sohngen, who has worked with the IPCC since the late 1990s.
Although energy production is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture and changes to land use account approximately 22%. Sohngen said that these numbers could either be reduced by curbing deforestation, or turning to other biofuels. This would reduce the annual emissions of between 9 and 11 billion tons carbon dioxide.
The report also warns that if both governments and individuals don’t begin to take climate warnings seriously, global warming could soon become twice as catastrophic as it is now. Although many countries have already done this, Promised to limit warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, it’ll take real change, not political promises, to ensure humanity doesn’t waste its last chance, the report said.
Over 18,000 scientific papers were reviewed by researchers from more then 165 countries to create the report. These papers covered topics such as restructuring fossil fuels and policy recommendations to promote international cooperation.
There were also some positive news in the report.
Between 2010 and 2019, greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest, but this has been slowed significantly. The pandemic has caused CO to rise.2The emissions also fell temporarily in 2020, but then rose in the second half.
The report also states that the technologies and policies necessary to stop global warming from reaching new heights are already in place. Solar and wind power are just two of the best options to combat climate changes.
“Now there are more options and more ways for people to get involved in mitigating climate change that are within the realm of being cost effective,” Sohngen said. “Part of the reason why people are more optimistic about this report is because we’ve actually made progress on reducing emissions through mitigation actions.”
Sohngen stated that the only problem is how to implement them better. Funding is the greatest obstacle humanity will face.
“The scientific literature suggests that if we do want to stay under the 1.5 degree target, we have to really scale up financing,” Sohngen said. “We’ve estimated that about $50 to $250 billion per year over the next decade is needed to achieve some of the goals in the land-use sector for mitigation.”
It’s at this intersection, between land use and people, that the report indicates a “strong link between sustainable development, vulnerability and climate risks.”
That means that ramping up efforts to create sustainable development, and erasing extreme poverty, could be a huge factor in controlling and monitoring Earth’s overall health.
Sohngen said that he’s optimistic about how the public will respond to the report.
“There’s undoubtedly some approaches to climate change that we’re not thinking about now that hopefully, the next generation of scientists will think about in the future,” Sohngen said. “I think that this report is an opportunity for people to study and to develop new methods, and better solutions to the climate crisis.”
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