Inger Andersen (UNEP) on UNEP Report Launch - Press Conference

All right.
On that note, I don't see any other questions.
We will go to our guest, please.
If we could put Inger online.
Inger, we see you very well.
As mentioned, we're delighted to be joined by Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Program, from looking at your background, I think you're joining us from your office in Nairobi.
There we go.
Hi.
If we could put Inger on the screen, there we go.
Without further ado, I'll give you the floor and then we'll take some questions.
Thank you very much and good afternoon to New York and good evening from Nairobi and many thanks to you, Staff, for inviting us and allowing us to do this briefing on UNEP's latest report, Limiting Overshoot.
Now, this report tells us that global temperature rise is set to cross the 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre industrial level and thereby crossing what the world agreed during the Paris Agreement talks in 2015.
And this will likely be taking place within the next few years.
This is the legacy of our own inaction.
As the globe, extreme heat waves are already proving that climate impacts will strike faster, hit harder, and last longer, costing more lives and causing deeper disruptions.
Above 1.5 degrees centigrade, we can expect an intensification of extreme weather, of glacier melt, of ecosystem loss, and of sea level rise and human health and food and water, security, cities and infrastructure will come under increasing strain.
So put simply, there is no good outcome if we remain above the 1.5 million Even if we do exceed 1.5, 1.5 still remains absolutely the goal.
That doesn't change, but we must now approach it differently because now we are coming at it from above.
This report offers options how to by getting on a so called overshoot, peak, and decline pathway, how to make that journey.
And that means keeping the peak as low as possible and keeping the peak as short as possible, and then working very hard to bring the temperature back down as quickly as possible.
Now, let me be clear.
The quickest and most effective way that we can do this is by accelerating transition away from fossil fuels, delivering deep cuts to CO two methanes and other greenhouse gas gases, obviously.
Adré key sectors, obviously, energy, but also cooling and energy efficiency, demand and supply side reform will remain important, and this will determine how long the overshoot lasts and whether we are able to bring that temperature back down.
This report was produced because of that legacy of inaction.
What happens next depends on what actions we take now.
We need stronger political will and stronger multilateralism.
We need more agile and inclusive governance.
We need to consider equity and justice because that has to be at the core of all action.
And we will, of course, need much more finance.
Countries with greater historical responsibility for climate change should do the most work.
This generation, and this is important because this overshoot is now in the next few years.
So it is our generation, us.
We have to act urgently to avoid passing a bigger burden onto the future generation, and we will require a fundamental rethink to long term governance to ensure that those who have contributed the least to global warming are not left to bear its greatest burdens.
The future will bring many unknowns, but we do know that decisions taken now will determine if we have a chance of returning to 1.5 or below.
Every fraction of a degree avoided, every year by which the overshoot is shortened, and every adaptation action taken will save lives, will protect ecosystems, and reduce economic losses.
So now is the time to double down on climate action, not give up on it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, and we'll take some questions.
Ed, please.
Thank you very much on behalf of the United Nations Correspondent Association for doing this briefing.
My name is Edith Lettera from the Associated Press.
You used two words that basically sum up the big problem, political will.
Do you see any prospect of the current situation changing so that there would be a real ramp up of political will to try and get to this peak and get down to a valley? Please go ahead and go.
Thank you.
Of course, we are a technical and scientific agency, and our job is to put the science and the evidence out there and then make sure that it is heard and understood.
I think that youth have understood this.
They took the case to the ICJ, as you well know.
I think that many countries have indeed understood this.
I speak to you from Kenya that has invested heavily in renewables over 30 years and have 92% renewable in the electricity sector.
Um, and so there are countries that understand this.
I had the privilege of doing a pre launch briefing with Heads of State of the Pacific yesterday, and they clearly understand this.
This is a matter of survival, not a matter of negotiation.
Now, the question is, of course, whether those with the larger emissions are willing to lean in.
We are seeing a good number of them doing so.
We are seeing that renewable energy is much lower price in most markets than hydrocarbons.
We are just not moving fast enough, and so we will continue from our side to encourage that those energy shifts happen.
The bill for failure to do so as we know, will be much higher.
We also understand in this report that if we were to bypass 1.8, then getting back down to 1.5 will be extremely difficult with consequences that will have fundamental and calaamous impact for humanity.
That is why we're placing emphasis on the urgency of limiting the overshoot in temporal in time, as well as in degrees.
Thank you.
Islam.
Go ahead.
Thank you very much.
Ismdor from Anand Agency.
Would you compare this year reports with the previous one, how serious it is and also how this report may affect or will you present this report on the CP 31 coming in November in Turkey.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And with your pers.
Go ahead, please.
This is a new report coming at a new moment because of the reality of overshoot within the next few years.
And therefore, what we always do as well, Mr.
Islam, is that we also produce what is called the emissions gap report that comes closer to the COP and that report measures and looks at what are the commitments that countries have made in the NDC and other net zero commitments, and therefore, what is the likelihood of the temperature by 2,100.
Last year's report told us that the emissions gap, if you like, we were aiming for a 2.2 to a 2.5 degrees temperature in 2,100.
This report is quite different because this report looks at the reality, we now say that overshoot will happen in the coming few years.
And so the report looks at the consequences and the governance of that possible overshoot.
That's important.
It examines the full pathway and it looks at approaching and exceeding 1.5, and then the actions that are within our grasp on limiting that peak warming.
We also have to consider that until now, we've been looking at, let's do everything we can to avoid 1.5.
Well, now we have to understand what are the implications of a bypass and what will that mean for ecosystems, for economies, and for infrastructure, and of course, for human well being.
That's really what the report focuses on at this time, and it's quite different from the emissions gap report.
Thank you, please, Bishan.
Thank you very much, Bishan Abuyk with Al Jazeer Arabic.
Just a quick question on the urgency and the timelines when you're saying that you are encouraging countries to take action to avoid the 1.5.
What kind of policies and how much time would that need in terms of if a policy is put in place to actually avoid reaching that 1.5 number? Well, at this point, it's our projection that avoidance is near impossible because we have already emitted into the atmosphere this amount of CO two, and therefore, that is now in our atmosphere and therefore impacting global warming.
Now on the question of urgency and timelines, getting back down from the overshoot is what we need to focus on.
And of course, the longer we take to not take the immediate actions that we need, which is about decarboniization, which is about our energy sector, which is about methane, which is about alternative and renewable energy, which is about the transport sector, which is about what we finance, all of that on the mitigation side, the longer we take, well, the higher then is the overshoot and therefore, the timeline is very much in our hands to a degree.
We have now climate procrastinated so that we have not stayed below, and therefore we are saying within the next few years, the likely overshoot will happen.
We could potentially bring it back down with enormous action over a number of decades.
But if we fail to take that urgent action, then we could be taking much longer time with the consequences, therefore, for low lying cities, including mega cities, with the consequences for small island developing states and obviously with the consequences for agriculture, food security, border security, fire storms and inundations as well as droughts.
Thank you very much.
Any more questions? Just go ahead.
Sorry, this is Nam Adulwi Rudo.
I didn't know if I caught you give us a specific year.
You've been saying with the next few years.
Do we know when exactly by 2030, by 2035? What is a few years? Thank you.
It's obviously a very good question and one as a scientific organization, we would not like to give a date and time, but it's a reasonable question.
We've seen that we are now inching towards the 1.5.
We're seeing what our emissions load are and we understand what the NDCs are.
When we say the next few years, yes, it is within the coming, certainly decade.
Thank you.
We'll go online, Iftkar Ali, Associated Press of Pakistan.
Thank you, staff.
Madam, given you have outlined measures that government and industries can take to lower the temperature.
But what ordinary people, the citizens of the world can contribute in that effort? I think many ordinary people would like their governments and industries to do more.
So let me just say that people can also push their governments and industries in whichever way that is appropriate to, in fact, do more, to be responsive to ordinary people's children who are going to live with the consequences of what we are about to see.
But beyond that, of course, Um, and I will not put this burden on the individual citizen because it is something that states and industries need to take leadership on, but each one of us have a degree of a footprint and each one of us can decide and make decisions accordingly.
The reality is, of course, that people in the global North have a much heavier carbon footprint than people in the global South, simply because of consumption and production.
And so there is an onus on those countries with the heaviest footprint to lean in and to invest in sectors that would allow for reduction.
And whilst many are doing it, we are asking that they lean in even more.
And the fact that we are in the next few years going to bypass 1.5, that does not mean that we should take our foot off the e-vehicle accelerator.
To the contrary, it means that we need to go faster and more rapid to limit that overshoot.
Thank you very much.
Inger, thank you for coming in for us from Nairobi and we wish you a good day.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.