Page 51 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

Tackling Environmental Crime throUgh standardized Methodologies

Towards a low carbon future. Policies and scenarios after COP21

Francesco Bosello
Head of Unit “Economic Analysis of Climate Impacts and Policy” of the Euro-Mediterranean
Centre for Climate Change

In this short presentation, I would like to convey a main message: even
though we are succeeding with climate change according to the Paris agreement
and the path the Paris agreement is proposing, we yet have to face the greater
challenges posed by climate change, such as its adverse distributional or equity
implication. Climate change is something that produces injustice and inequality;
given that the capacity of our society to bear inequality and injustice is limited,
these are very serious threats to sustainability and to the sustainability of our
development.

Before starting my presentation I would like to define climate change
because it tends to be confused with the global warming and the greenhouse
effect: all these things are connected but are not the same. Climate change in
the wider concept (caused by global warming) and a set of spatial, temporal
phenomena which pertains climate, as well as atmospheric, ocean circulation
phenomena, not only temperature but also how animal species grow, reproduce
and are spread in the planet.

I should also say that the greenhouse effect, global warming and climate
change are no novelty, since these phenomena were already known in the 19th-
century as Earth climate has always been changing throughout. However, this
is a period with unprecedented level of warming and unprecedented speed in
which warming is occurring. What matters the most is that there is a detectable
human contribution to this phenomenon, and such contribution, in the langua-
ge of IPCC, with a probability higher than 95%, is the dominant factor deter-
mining climate change. This is a problem because it affects many dimensions
and areas vital to our existence.

The impacts of climate change on areas vital to our existence are many; a
non-exhaustive list should include risks to food and water security, the possibi-
lity that biodiversity and some ecosystems may disappear, impacts on the dyna-

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