Keywords

FormalPara Interviewees

  • Gina Badenoch

  • Jane Burston

  • Arturo Condo

  • Lars Flottrong

  • Tritan Lecomte

  • Robert Krotzer

  • Moran Sol Broza

  • Barbara Steiner

‘To all of you who choose to look the other way every day because you seem more frightened of the changes that can prevent catastrophic climate change than the catastrophic climate change itself. Your silence is worst of all’.—Greta Thunberg

1 Introduction

Climate change and global warming are civilizational threats to human existence on Earth and need to be addressed immediately. Many consider that climate change is already a full-blown crisis, and things are dire enough that if action is not taken immediately, there would be no coming back from the consequences. In that regard, international-level coordination and action is already underway as many countries have announced net-zero pledges and actions like the COP-26 or the Glasgow Climate Change Conference reinforced the global understanding that climate change is an urgent concern, and if appropriate steps are not taken immediately, by the time the dire consequences affect the world, we will not be able to do anything to stop them.

The impacts of climate change are bound to be widespread, impacting every part of human life and the planet’s functioning. Climate change disbalances global climate systems by altering pressure areas, temperatures and wind patterns which has many knock-on effects for climactic conditions and weather patterns across the world. Further, disbalanced ecosystems due to warmer temperatures, more saline water intrusion and the extinction of species which cannot adapt to climate change will result in the transformation of ecosystems across the world ranging from tundra and permafrost ecosystems in Siberia to tropical rainforest systems of the Amazon basin. They will all look radically different in the next few decades if global warming is not curtailed. For humans, the loss of livelihoods is a major concern and so is internal migration due to climate change. Internal migration can be triggered by a variety of the consequences of climate change, which include coastal areas being flooded, drought conditions in some regions, water scarcity, risks of food insecurity and direct heat stroke-related morbidity concerns.

Across the world, it is understood that the difference between a global warming of 1.5 °C and 2 °C is a civilizational threat as the reality of a 2 °C warming is one which is beset with large-scale disasters, loss of life and an altering of human lives to the extent that living on Earth will become gradually unsustainable. However, restricting warming to 1.5 °C has potential to maintain human life in an adapted format, which mitigates the risk of climate change. To achieve this, a net-zero emission reality is necessary and must be achieved by 2050, with the maximum limit of 2055, which gives us a two-thirds chance of restricting global warming to the desired limits. The changes that we are bound to see by 2050 due to climate change are discussed in this report and largely include the following:

  • Global warming will most likely be limited to 1.5 °C with a less than 30% chance of overshooting this target. The warming will continue at 0.1–0.3 °C per decade in the next three decades, with the optimum target being 1 °C.

  • Human activities like industrialization have been the cause of 1 °C warming above pre-industrial levels in the last century alone. Even after cutting down to net-zero emissions, the accumulated effect of persistent greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide will remain.

  • Arctic, Antarctic, Small Island Developing Nations and coastal regions of countries or continents will be the worst affected.

  • Warm water coral reefs and fisheries are bound to be severely impacted, while flooding becomes more common both from oceans and internal river systems.

  • The pathway to 1.5 °C warming is one of net-zero emissions by 2050–2055. This makes it necessary for widespread adoption of clean energy through electricity, much higher adoption of electrical vehicles, massive progress in clean energy technology like storage and transportation and mass adoption of carbon capture and use systems.

  • Mean temperatures of all regions will rise, with extreme hot day temperatures rising by almost 3 °C, while cold nights become warmer by 4 °C. Sea levels will rise to threaten coastal areas with expected sea level rise ranging between 26 and 77 centimetres.

  • Globally, 6% of insects, 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates are predicted to lose their ecosystems and possibly go extinct or have to evolve rapidly. Forest fires will become more frequent, while the threat of zoonotic diseases in humans increases.

  • Almost 1.5–2.5 million square kilometres of tundra and permafrost area will thaw, whereas we will lose 70–90% of the global coral reefs. Many species may shift latitudes upwards, especially in marine ecosystems.

  • Agriculture will be severely impacted by climate change, as it is one of the major contributors of greenhouse gases, and erratic or extreme weather patterns will severely affect productivity in countries where agriculture is reliant on weather patterns.

  • Human dietary patterns would have to become more environmentally conscious by shifting away from ruminant meats to other animal-based meat or the most carbon-efficient plant proteins. Livestock consumption and production will need to be curtailed as that process is a major source of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, we will need to reduce food waste and loss by at least 50%.

  • Large-scale climate migration is quite likely with an estimated 216 million people across the world becoming internal climate migrants. The worst affected regions will be North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Pacific.

  • The causes of large-scale migration will include food insecurity, water scarcity and threats of flooding which will become common in coastal areas due to sea level rises.

2 Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees

The most likely scenario of global warming pegs the warming compared to pre-industrial levels at around 1.5–2°C. There are many significant differences in the small range of 0.5-degree celsius extra warming. However, urgent action, as is evident from national policies and international meetings like the COP-26, points to the fact that countries across the world are recognizing the civilizational threat of climate change and are acting to avoid that. The likelier scenario, therefore, is for countries to kick into action and restrict global warming to 1.5°C. However, such warming will not be completely inconsequential either, and while it avoids the worst possible scenarios and worst outcomes, there would still be significant consequences for the world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has prepared a special report on the global warming of 1.5°C which envisions a world where climate change is mitigated but the consequences of decades of unabated industrialization are still felt across the world. They find that a warming of 1.5 degrees is significantly better on all accounts than one of 2 degrees, which is not a surprising conclusion given that the effect of even half a degree of warming is extremely large on weather patterns, sea levels and other large geographic phenomenon.

Already, human industrialization has been the reason for almost the 1.0 °C of global warming above the pre-industrial levels, with the range of warming varying between 0.8 °C and 1.2 °C. This is bound to increase to an average of 1.5 °C by 2050 if it continues increasing at the current rate. However, these models are all probabilistic and the more action that is taken, the higher probability we have of restricting warming to 1.5 °C. Even in a no-action taken scenario, there is a very small chance we may end up achieving the target of 1.5 °C warming, and even with all the precautions and actions taken, there is a small chance the warming exceeds that level simply due to the damage we have already caused. Policy pathways, therefore, are somewhat working on maximizing the chances we have of restricting global warming to prescribed targets. Over the past few decades, observations show that human-activity-related global warming has steadily increased by 0.1–0.3 °C per decade, and urgent action is needed to stem that tide and prevent anything more than 0.1 °C of warming per decade for the next few decades, if we are to achieve our targets.

There is also significant variation in how various parts of the earth are affected with the Arctic and Antarctic areas experiencing much higher warming than the global average (by a factor of two or three times) and places closer to the ocean having lesser warming on average than those far away from it. The flipside to this is obviously that the places closest to the ocean are most vulnerable to global-warming-related rises in sea levels and ocean- or sea-originating natural disasters. The intensity and frequency of extreme weather events have already increased significantly in the last few decades, with higher instances of cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. The warming effects of human emissions over the past century or so are unlikely to ever be reserved completely and it is quite plausible that this warming persists for not just centuries, but millennia, and cause persistent changes in climate systems across the world. The effects of past global warming are persistent and permanent in this sense. However, they are also unlikely to push the global warming levels beyond 1.5 °C, which functions well for policymaking as they can focus on mainly preventing current emissions.

One such pathway is reaching a world of net-zero global carbon emissions, which is considered to be a necessary and inevitable destination by the IPCC. The major difference arises in how significantly different the path taken to reach there would be to the present reality and, consequently, how many decades it would take us to reach a net-zero reality. Any delays in that regard add to the warming of the earth, and as we discussed, that would be persistent and permanent for centuries to come. In fact, the best-case scenario possible is for net-zero emissions to be reached by 2040 which would result in a more than 95% chance of restraining global warming to below 1.5 °C, but that remains an unlikely scenario. The more likely result is that we are able to cut down emissions by half till 2030 and then reach net-zero between 2050 and 2055, which is the baseline scenario in which we still have a two-thirds chance of meeting the targeted warming level. However, in the worst-case scenario, if no action were to be taken, it is highly unlikely that the target is reached and a warming level of 2 °C becomes the most likely scenario, which is a dire reality.

In terms of predicted impacts, the predicted risks can vary from high to very high risk for unique and threatened systems like the coral reefs, from moderate to high risk when it comes to extreme weather events which are already being witnessed across the world, from moderate to high risk when it comes to distribution and aggregate scale of global impacts as it is going to a global crisis and again moderate to high risk for large-scale singular events such as tsunamis and floods which can threaten a large number of people at once. Unique systems like coral reefs and the Arctic are bound to be existentially threatened by global warming, while fisheries will understandably be much more severely impacted than terrestrial agriculture. Coastal flooding and river flooding are all set to become much more common and threaten lives as well.

3 Pathway to 1.5 °C Warming

The pathway to limiting global warming to 1.5 °C depends on reaching a world with net-zero carbon emissions and doing so hastily. The International Energy Agency has mapped out a possible pathway for the world to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and that is the necessary reality needed for limiting global warming to these targets as well. To prevent warming overshooting beyond 1.5 °C requires cutting net carbon dioxide emissions by almost half in the next decade, with the other half being reduced in the two decades between 2030 and 2050. According to climactic models, to have a good shot at restricting global warming to 1.5 °C, the net-zero carbon emission world needs to be reached latest by 2055. If it gets delayed to around 2070, then the global warming target revises to 2 °C which has much more severe impacts on human lives and extreme climactic conditions and resembles an apocalyptic scenario. The necessary conditions for reaching net-zero emissions involves a lot of technological innovation, consumer behaviour changes and most of all strong and determined policymaking. Net-zero emission targets are at loggerheads with economic development targets which are often major political economy concerns, and myopic electoral visions that only extend 4–5 years in most countries can fail to account for the long-term target of sustainable development that reconciles economic development with climactic considerations.

A net-zero emission world needs to reduce emissions of methane, black carbon and nitrous oxide from sectors such as waste, agriculture and industrial production. The side benefits of net-zero emissions include better health for people as the air they breathe is less polluted, aside from the obvious benefit of avoiding climate catastrophes. The necessity of a net-zero emission world primarily comes from the need to limit the total human emissions of carbon dioxide beginning from the pre-industrial era. If we are to keep to 1.5 °C of global warming, we can at best have around 40–45 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions per year till 2030 and then 20–25 gigatons between 2030 and 2050, to have at least a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. Further, the available addition that can be made to global atmospheric greenhouse gas stock is also going to reduce significantly by 2050 due to the thawing of permafrost in polar regions. When the permafrost thaws due to warmer temperatures, it will release large amounts of methane which are currently trapped underground, further reducing the emissions humans can make. The estimates for the methane emission coming from permafrost thawing range between 50 and 100 gigatons in the next 100 years, and it remains to be seen how much would be released by 2050.

To reach a target of net-zero emissions, the major responsibility lies with the energy sector which needs to radically transform over the next three decades. As developing countries undergo economic progress, their energy demands are bound to increase, which will increase global energy demands by almost 50% by 2050, with an annual average growth rate of around 2%. Most of this additional demand will be in the form of electricity, which is where the great hope for the future lies, as we must transition to an electric reality in order to avoid reliance on fossil fuels. This will require transformation of electric production, supply and storage systems and also our transportation systems. The first step is obviously ramping up clean energy production with the IEA estimating that realizing a net-zero future by 2050 requires adding capacity for generating 630 gigawatts of solar power and 390 gigawatts of wind power every year. In this scenario, three-fourths of all new-energy demand will be met using solar and wind energy, with some contributions from biofuels and nuclear energy as substitutes for the stability provided by fossil fuels. To store and transport this clean energy in an efficient manner, major progress is needed in long-duration energy storage systems as solar and wind energy generation is necessarily erratic and relies on climactic conditions. For them to be stable sources of energy, it is necessary that a major part of produced energy is stored to be used when production is not feasible. To ensure against weather shocks, it is important to make large power grids that cover many regions such that any one region can support the whole grid in cases of unfavourable weather conditions or failure of one part of the grid.

Further, to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, electric vehicles need to become the norm and their sales need to account for at least 60% of global sales by 2050, whereas they only account for 5% of annual global vehicle sales right now. Improved electrification and power grids will also allow for regular, automated electric vehicle recharging stations to be set up across the world to make their use feasible and convenient. Despite all of this, some industries will continue relying on natural gas and petroleum due to their constraints, such as chemical production plants, and for them, it will be necessary to ensure that the carbon emissions from production processes are minimized. Carbon capture and use technologies are already being experimentally developed, but it will be crucial for governments to nudge industries towards adopting them. Private economic processes will lead to very delayed adoption of carbon capture, so policies like a carbon tax and rebates for costs incurred in carbon capture could go a long way in ensuring that private industries also adopt these technologies.

4 Impact on Ecological and Climactic Systems

The impacts of climate change are bound to be varied on different agricultural, oceanic and climactic systems. The mean temperatures of all regions will secularly rise, with more inhabited cities with higher levels of pollution or greenhouse gas emissions having more extreme weather conditions. Rainfall will also become much more erratic and heavier in most parts of the world, while at the same time the likelihood of drought conditions increases in other regions. Extreme hot days in mid-latitude areas would warm up by almost 3 °C, while extreme cold nights may also warm up by up to 4 °C. However, the number of extreme hot days are also expected to rise rapidly. Such conditions will affect cities in the Mediterranean, India, China and Middle East significantly. Global mean sea level rise is a major threat to coastal areas and restricting global warming to 1.5 °C as opposed to 2 °C will mean the sea level rise would be lower by almost 10 centimetres, which would put lesser regions under risk and also buy countries and regions more time to navigate sea level rises. The absolute levels of sea level rise range from somewhere between 26 and 77 centimetres with an average expected rise of 52 cm. The reduction of just 10 centimetres from global sea level rise will be significant as according to current populations, it would put ten million fewer people at risk of living in flooded areas or other sea level-related vulnerabilities. Unlike warming or even global carbon dioxide levels, sea level rises are not predicted to be curtailed permanently, but only delayed in order to buy humans enough time to adapt to them efficiently. Even a warming of 1.5 °C will be enough for sea levels to continue rising for at least a couple of centuries as the ice sheets of the polar areas slowly melt away. However, reducing warming and slowing down the loss of ice sheets is crucial to be able to adapt to these changes rather than face them in an apocalyptic scenario. Low-lying coastal areas and small islands will inevitably face many challenges to their ecological balance, even if they avoid full-scale disasters like tsunamis and flooding, as saltwater will intrude their ecological systems and imbalance it, while also damage their infrastructure.

The impact of global warming will also be felt in wider ecological systems, as species loss and extinction will be an unavoidable reality, which in turn has knock-on effects on the ecological balance of the areas where those species lived, as a part of the complex food web is missing. This will be true across freshwater, terrestrial, coastal and even marine ecosystems. According to the IPCC, even at a 1.5 °C warming level, 6% of insects, 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates will lose their ecosystems, which is still a damage limitation as these numbers would be more than doubled with a warming of 2 °C. Meanwhile, we already see forest fires becoming more prominent across the globe with repeated outbreaks in places like North America, India and Australia. More intrusion into forest spaces coupled with imbalanced and shrinking ecosystems will lead to more such events in 2050. This will also result in many terrestrial ecosystems being transformed as new balances will emerge in the face of excess warming and species going extinct. Similar to marine ecosystems, tundra forests that rely on cold climate for their survival will also be threatened with woody shrubs that usually grow in more temperate conditions invading tundra ecosystems and leading to further warming of these areas. Permafrost areas and tundra ecosystems are projected to thaw rapidly as we lose almost 1.5–2.5 million square kilometres of these areas by 2050.

Global warming will also have significant impacts on oceanic temperatures which will lead to increases in ocean acidity and decreases in oceanic oxygen levels. This is already underway through warm-water coral reefs being affected and facing existential risks with most of them predicted to be wiped out in the long run. Coral reefs will decline by somewhere between 70% and 90% with a warming of 1.5 °C and are almost certain to be completely wiped out at 2 °C. As a consequence of warming of oceans, it is also very likely that marine species adapt by shifting to higher latitudes where the oceanic temperatures resemble their normal ecological conditions. However, many species are also bound to be lost due to this process, and such ecological shifts will inevitably reduce the productivity of fisheries, aquaculture and any other human activities dependent on marine ecology. Higher levels of greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide, are also bound to increase ocean acidity levels which would in turn threaten various marine ecosystems by challenging the survival of species like algae and some kinds of fish which depend on normal ocean calcification processes. Global fishery models predict a decrease in marine fishery productivity of almost 1.5 million tonnes in the next three decades due to global warming.

Some of the other expected weather changes by 2050 due to climate change include:

  • Temperature extremes: Heat waves will become more intensive, more frequent and longer lasting, as cold weather episodes decrease. Daily minimum temperatures will rise rapidly, while the number of frost days reduces in higher latitudes.

  • Precipitation: Rainfall will increase substantially in tropics, decrease in the subtropical areas and increase again for higher latitudes. Higher global average temperatures will mean more water evaporation and, consequently, more precipitation. Extreme precipitation events like droughts or floods will increase in frequency across the world, but specifically for mid- and high-latitude areas.

  • Snow and ice covers: Global warming will reduce the snow cover and sea ice cover to a large extent as glaciers and ice cap lose a lot of mass due to longer periods of melting in the summer and shorter winter precipitation to compensate for it. These processes are also what would lead to the inevitable increase of sea levels across the world, with ice melting from the Arctic and Antarctic significantly adding to global mean sea levels. Meanwhile, permafrost regions are also expected to experience widespread thawing due to the warmer temperatures.

  • Regional monsoons: Asian monsoons are likely to become more extreme and witness increases in precipitation. Similarly, the African and Australian monsoons are also expected to increase, whereas monsoons over Mexico and Central America are likely to reduce. Asian monsoons will be significantly impacted by carbon aerosols whose impact remains hard to predict, and uncertainty prevails about their future.

  • Ocean acidification: Higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the air is associated with more acidic oceans with the pH level predicted to fall by 0.14 to 0.35 units in the twenty-first century. The surface waters of oceans will be immediately affected, while deep ocean areas will be only marginally impacted.

  • Sea levels: The average rate of increase of sea levels will exceed the historical rate average for 1961–2003, with an estimated rise in sea levels of 3.8 mm/year. The melting of glaciers, polar ice caps and the Greenland ice sheet will all be significant contributors to rising sea levels.

5 Impact on Human Lives and Livelihoods

Meanwhile, humans are obviously bound to be very significantly impacted by climate change and even a global warming of 1.5 °C, which is a hopeful figure, will lead to unprecedented changes in human existence. These changes will affect people’s health, livelihoods, food security, physical security and water supply, as well as general economic growth. While in urban settings, people living in coastal regions are most vulnerable to the consequences of global warming, indigenous people who rely on natural resources and ecological balance for their livelihoods and survival are bound to be the most affected by climate change. Further, people who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods will also be significantly affected by erratic weather conditions leading to uncertain produce. Even residents of colder regions, such as those living in Nordic countries and the Arctic region, will be significantly impacted by the sudden transformation of their climate and surroundings. Further, Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries are bound to have to curtail their development to try and tackle the climate crisis, which puts further strains on their economic capacities. As a consequence, especially amongst the most vulnerable populations, poverty rates could increase with several hundred million people pushed into poverty by global-warming-related risks. Consequences on human health are also bound to be significant, although the risk of direct heat-related deaths will not be very high, as indirect effects will become very significant and severe. These will include risks to food security arising from threats to agricultural productivity and increased threat of diseases like dengue and malaria. Receding forest areas and unstable ecological climates are also bound to increase human exposure to zoonotic diseases. With the coronavirus pandemic, humans have already experienced the severe threat exposure to zoonotic diseases holds at a civilizational level, but invasions into forest regions and increased out-migration from unstable ecological systems are bound to increase our vulnerability to more zoonotic disease outbreaks.

6 Climate-Change-Related Migration

Climate-change-induced migration is bound to become one of the major drivers of internal migration patterns in the next few decades. Population trends, distributions and patterns are all bound to change significantly over the next few decades as the world population approaches a stable level and global-warming-induced internal migration continues to rise. The World Bank’s Groundswell report (2021) attempts to model internal migration to find out what the impact of climate change will be for various regions of the world. The most vulnerable people across the world will be the most affected by these changes, and by 2050, as many as 216 million people across the world could become internal climate migrants. Even in the more optimistic scenario of a world where the climate crisis is managed well, it is still expected that around 100 million people will become internal climate migrants which is a substantial amount. Some of the key drivers of migration will be slow-onset impacts, such as water scarcity, shocks to food security and crop productivity, and sea level rises which make it unfeasible to live in coastal areas. Massive internal migration will also inevitably lead to political strife and could very conceivably undo the work done so far in reducing extreme poverty from many parts of the world.

Out of these 216 million, 86 million could be from Sub-Saharan Africa alone representing 4.2% of the total population of the area, with another 48 million from East Asia and Pacific, 41 million from South Asia and 20 million from North Africa where it again accounts for 9% of the predicted population. The scale of migration will be massive in the world’s most poor regions and places which are most vulnerable to changes induced by climate change. Sub-Saharan Africa has both these features as there are many people living in poverty there, and it is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as it has many fragile dryland ecosystems and also comprises of many coastlines around which people would be most affected. Agriculture continues to depend on rain in this region, and erratic and extreme rainfall patterns would cause not just employment loss for the large share of population employed in agricultural work, but also threaten the food security of people in the region. Further up north, countries in North Africa will also see large shares of population become internal migrants because many of them are already in desert areas where water scarcity is bound to become even more extreme due to climate change. In South Asia, Bangladesh is bound to be the most affected country with up to 20 million internal climate migrants by 2050, which is 50% of the total projected migrants for the entire South Asia region. Additionally, while the scale of migration will not be large as their populations are small to begin with, Small Island Developing States are bound to face extreme hardships as saltwater intrudes into their ecosystems, their coastal areas get flooded, and extreme weather events cause massive destruction, all of which will lead many people to be not just internal climate migrants, but possibly attempt to migrate to other countries.

Agricultural transformation is also necessary to sustain a net-zero reality as currently, it is one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for almost one-fourth of global emissions alongside land-use changes. Agriculture’s greenhouse gas exports notoriously include methane and nitrous oxide, with both gases having stronger warming effects than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Agriculture is responsible for 45% of global methane emissions, with 80% of that coming from livestock, and also accounts for 80% of global nitrous oxide emissions from the use of fertilizers. However, the good thing is that these gases have short lives, especially methane which only persists in the atmosphere for 12 years. Consequently, rapid action in agricultural transformation and the curtailing of livestock use can cut down methane production significantly, which will also show in atmospheric methane levels within a decade and a half. There is a lot of potential to reverse the impact of methane on global warming, which is different from the experience with carbon dioxide, which is persistent and likely to remain in the atmosphere in the infinite time horizon.

The changes required in agriculture, specifically, and food production, in general, are very large-scale behavioural shifts which require mass coordination. Agriculture employs almost 2 billion people across the world, who will all need to shift to more sustainable practices in order for structural transformations to be effective. At the same time, many shifts are needed from the consumer sector as well. Currently, we waste 33% of all of the world’s food production and consume three times the recommended level of animal protein. Cutting down on wastage reduces the total production, and therefore resources, needed to sustain human food demand, while reducing dependence on animal meats shifts focus away from the heavy greenhouse-gas-emitting production of livestock.

In a McKinsey Quarterly report (August 2022) identifying the pathway for agriculture to reach a net-zero emission reality, the most crucial measures that will be adopted by 2050 in order to cut down emissions will include the following:

  • Adopting zero-emission on-farm machinery and equipment, with increased use of clean energy-powered equipment, and installing solar panels on farms.

  • Rice cultivation:

    • Improving fertilization practices in rice cultivation where overfertilization often leads to excess release of nitrous oxide.

    • Improving rice paddy water management as the water-logged soils of rice paddies are prime ground for methane-producing bacteria.

    • Expanding the use of dry direct seeding in rice cultivation.

  • Livestock production:

    • Employing greenhouse-gas-focused genetic selection and breeding of animals to ensure the production of animal protein happens with lesser greenhouse gas emissions.

    • Improving animal health monitoring and illness prevention mechanisms to make livestock production more efficient.

    • Modifying animal feeds by optimizing the amount of land required to grow it and expanding the use of additives that enhance livestock production.

    • Massively expanding the use of anaerobic manure digesters and scaling up the production of biofuels such that methane produced by livestock is converted to useful biofuels rather than becoming part of greenhouse gases.

  • Other crops:

    • Reducing overfertilization and overuse of nitrogen fertilizers in agricultural production.

    • Increasing the use of no-tillage or low-tillage agricultural practices.

    • Increasing the adoption of controlled-release and stabilized fertilizers to minimize the emissions resulting from fertilizer use.

  • Consumer-side changes:

    • Shifting livestock consumption to more environment-friendly alternatives like pork, poultry and fish instead of ruminant animals like beef and lamb which are ten times as carbon-intensive as other animal proteins and 30 times as carbon-intensive as plant-based proteins.

    • Eliminating food loss and waste needs, with the target of reducing it below 20% by 2050 which would reduce emissions from food waste by 40% globally.

  • Natural carbon sinks like forest areas have immense potential to absorb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and carefully cultivating them over the next few decades has immense potential to support almost 6–8 gigatons of carbon sequestration, but it would require reforestation of almost 50–60% of land area that has been deforested over the last 150 years.

Global warming of 1.5 °C is likely to result in small net reductions of production of key crops like wheat, rice, maize and other cereals. Most of these reductions are likely to come from heavily weather-dependent agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Southern America. At the same time, nutritional qualities of crops are also likely to take a toll due to changing weather patterns. However, efforts in this regard are already being made through biofortified crops which are likely to become preponderant and also resilient to climate change. This is why the net reductions will be small and not very large, as efforts are underway to create climate-resilient and nutrient-fortified crops with some breakthroughs having already been made, pointing to significant innovations in this field in the future. However, while agriculture may be genetically modified to become resilient, it is highly unlikely similar processes will be very successful for livestock as they are also affected by climactic changes, faster spread of diseases and reduced water availability. Consequently, it is very likely that livestock-dependent meat becomes more expensive and unaffordable as livestock themselves are threatened by climate change. Already, movements are underway that call for veganism as the dominant nutritional plan as livestock take up a significant proportion of human agricultural production and cause a lot of net pollution which is unsustainable in the face of efforts to reduce global warming.

7 Climate Change and Sustainable Development Goals

While the world undergoes transformational and structural changes in order to adapt the realities of the climate crises, sustainable development to improve the quality of human life continues to be a major challenge. Prioritizing one over the other might give some returns in the short run but will have dire consequences in the long term. Consequently, short-term planning and policymaking, such as the one driven by electoral incentives, are unlikely to encourage a synthesis of these concerns. Excess global warming will drastically destroy systems and cause widespread loss of life and livelihoods, which would be antithetical to the goals of sustainable development. At the same time, developing without concern for environmental impacts is exactly what has resulted in the urgent situation we find ourselves in and will inevitably result in disastrous outcomes which could be civilizational threats. Delaying action to reduce emissions will make the challenge progressively tougher, as costs associated with technological adoption continue rising, carbon capture infrastructure would remain undeveloped, and lack of experience with clean energy technology will reduce the nous with which policymakers and innovators are tackling environmental challenges.

Poverty eradication is a major Sustainable Development Goal, and it would be much easier to achieve it in a world where global warming is limited to 1.5 °C as opposed to 2 °C, as that would necessitate fewer trade-offs when it comes to economic development and also reduce the impacts warming has on lives and living conditions. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals from 2015 acknowledge these crucial linkages between global warming and developmental challenges. Mitigation of vulnerabilities concerning climate change and adapting local communities are regions to equip them enough to tackle the challenge on their own to a decent extent, which are both aspects of the challenge to limit warming levels. Many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) stand to be threatened by global warming unless the levels are managed, as impacts on agricultural systems are bound to disturb food security, while the intrusion of saline water in freshwater ecosystems will disturb the availability of consumable freshwater, and developing countries need to achieve economic progress without increasing greenhouse gas emissions which is starkly different from historical developmental processes where economic development and carbon dioxide emissions were closely related. Consequently, policymaking for economic progress, food security and water security all need to account for climate change realities, and only limiting warming to 1.5 °C can help ameliorate these negative consequences so that the world can meet sustainable development goals while ensuring limited global warming. At the same time, poorly designed policies have the risk of threatening both climate change targets and Sustainable Development Goals, and the linkages between the two necessitate that policy targeted towards either of the two challenges remains actively cognizant of the externalities posed towards the other challenge. The exact impacts on Sustainable Development Goals remain to be seen. At one level, curtailing climate change is good for economic progress and human well-being, and at the same time, it places restrictions on how rapidly countries can develop in the modern age. Consequently, the net effect on aspects like poverty reduction is somewhat vague, and the specific interactions and synergies between climactic and sustainable development goals will determine the direction and magnitude of the net effect. The most efficient way of achieving both targets is by reducing energy demand, managing the levels of material consumption and altering food consumption patterns to emit lesser greenhouse gases. There will be many positive health externalities to preventing global warming from overshooting target levels, including cleaner air especially for people living in urban areas of South Asia, more robust agricultural systems which contribute towards food security and regular supply of clean freshwater for human consumption, aside from the obvious consequence of fewer out-migrations from coastal areas.

The challenge of limiting global carbon emissions itself presents economic opportunities to developing countries to invest in technologies that will define our future. Further, it is possible for governments across the world to attempt to divert global finance towards investing in climate-resilient infrastructure to harness private funds in modernizing old infrastructure and ensuring any new projects are up to the challenge. Similarly, government intervention is exactly what creates incentives against carbon dioxide dumping into the atmosphere by industries and mobilizes public and private finance towards clean energy infrastructure. On average, the annual investment needed in clean energy is around 2.4 trillion dollars till 2035, and while countries have expressed their concerns regarding climate change, most are yet to dedicate any significant portion of their GDP into fighting the crisis. The changes consistent with reaching emission targets can only become feasible in the face of disruptive technological progress when it comes to the production, storage and transportation of that energy.

8 Conclusion

The climate crisis remains one of the largest threats faced by humanity at a civilizational level. Urgent action is needed to ensure that we get through this challenge by adapting our lives to be more sustainable and in line with what the earth can allow for, rather than exploiting natural resources to no end. In many ways, even after restricting global warming to the current target of 1.5 °C, the consequences of historical carbon emissions will continue to persist. What we need to ensure is that those consequences are manageable in that they can be mitigated and do not turn into large-scale disasters. As we adapt to this new reality, more erratic and extreme weather is an inevitable reality, as many species go extinct, and earth’s ecosystems are permanently transformed by the warming of temperatures across the world. Our dietary patterns will also have to evolve to the challenge, as agriculture will become more sustainable by using technologies and implants which reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while also eliminating or reducing production of foods that are very carbon-intensive like lamb and beef. Many of the consequences of warming, such as those on weather patterns, are things we would have to adapt to live with, while also ensuring that we do not exacerbate the problem with further emissions. Consequently, the future of the world in 2050 is one of an adapted reality to mitigate the consequences of climate change, but also one of net-zero emissions.

9 Input from Interviewees

Gina Badenoch

Social entrepreneur and photographer; founder of Ojos que Sienten AC and Capaxia UK

Nature is paying back. We are a bit late. Sadly, I believe that we will see worst.

Jane Burston

Executive director and founder, Clean Air Fund

By 2050 we will have transformed energy, industry and agriculture. Most of us will live in cities—and mayors and communities will have led the way in making them greener, cleaner, more accessible places that are good for our health.

Unfortunately, we’ll also be adapting to the consequences of the global warming we didn’t avoid. We’ll have developed some infrastructure that helps us deal with the increase in extreme weather events, but many countries will need support to deal with the loss of and damage that will arise.

Arturo Condo

President, EARTH University

We believe that by 2050 the world will have succeeded in curbing GHG emissions through large-scale systems change supported by social and technological innovation. A much-needed food systems revolution will be an important part of this change, including a shift towards nature-positive food production. This revolution will be led by a global movement of front-line leaders equipped with the values, skills and attitudes needed to support primary food producers in making the transition to climate-friendly production systems.

Lars Flottrong

Business advisor, MoB

Strategy and risk management

The most important thing we should leave to the next generation that will ensure the safety of planet Earth? A still green earth with the chance to survive and to develop further.

In order to achieve this, what should mankind do? Humankind should urgently agree on immediate steps and measures to stop the destruction of our earth. Carbon emission has to be put under control and to be reduced. Waste production should be reduced and the focus should be on renewables materials.

The countries have to reduce the military spending and to re-channel the funds into science and search. New food production, water cleaning and production and air cleaning technologies have to be developed in order to survive.

Political and/or regional conflicts have to be brought to an end and a global democratic institute has to be established, providing equal rights to all people regardless of there national belonging or religion.

Robert Krotzer

City councilor of Graz, Austria, for Health and Care

Sustainable production, sustainable consumption, sustainable transport: all this leads to massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Tristan Lecomte

Chief executive officer, Pur Projet

I hope to see the settling of the climate crisis, which is the major risk affecting our future to be solved within the next 50 years.

Moran Sol Broza

Sustainable impact entrepreneur; founder of Be. and Sol Food

Soon, we will be using technology to help visualize Earth’s finite natural resources and understand the impact of our choices on us as individuals—and the collective—in real time. Once this begins to affect the mindset and behaviors of a critical mass (consumers), we will see a domino effect on society: borders will change their functions, governments will adjust legislation and agreements, and corporations will be forced to shift their business models and processes of manufacturing with less/zero waste. In the future, climate change will not only refer to the natural environment around us (plants, animals, insects, etc.), but recognize the importance of the interaction between us and how we treat one another.

Barbara Steiner

Director of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

A complete rethink has begun in the construction sector to stop cement production and sand mining. The European Climate Foundation with its hundreds of partner organizations worldwide worked successfully at the forefront of a global movement to ensure a livable planet for future generations. Together they succeeded in calling for legislation to avoid energy-intensive building materials and replace them with alternatives. Buildings are seen as ‘urban mines’, materials are ‘harvested’, and digital twins allow the reuse resource potential to be increased. Recycled concrete, new building materials and techniques offer alternatives. The re-appreciation of traditional materials and techniques has led to a re-appreciation of indigenous knowledge and cultural techniques.

Composite material made of, e.g. clay, pulp and mycelium, 3D printed in brick-like modules, allows complex and light forms. The living material allows the ‘bricks’ to grow together. The use of mortar, which causes high CO2 pollution due to its high cement content and energy-intensive production process, can be avoided. The prediction that there would be no more beaches in 2050 has fortunately not come true. The construction industry—until 2025 the world’s largest consumer of sand—has stopped its overexploitation. Beach vacation is still possible.