Author Archives: Jennifer Schwartz

This article aims to summarise the recent Climate Change report that was released by the UN’s IPCC, or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This will be done first by reference to the relevant global region, and near the end there is some further discussion on what comes next, and the role of this Government.

Europe

The report identified some key risks for the European region. First, there are likely to be heat-and-drought related risks to crop growing. While the rising temperatures may make agriculture more successful in Northern Europe, the higher heat and increased water scarcity will reduce output in Southern Europe, and the losses in the South are expected to be far greater than the gains in the North. If the global temperature rises by 2 degrees, water scarcity will likely impact a third of the population living in Southern Europe, or around 50,000,000 people, and if the temperature increases one degree further, more than 100,000,000 Europeans will experience water scarcity. At this temperature level – 3 degrees warmer – it is expected that coastal flood damage will increase ten-fold, and that the number of people impacted by flooding will double.