Page 53 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

Tackling Environmental Crime throUgh standardized Methodologies

spread all over the world that no place in the world will be safe because there
would be a widespread phenomenon with interrelated impacts multiplying one
over the other. Finally, we also risk large-scale singularities; so we cannot exclu-
de that through climate change some irreversible and catastrophic events occur.
So, if we provoke the shutdown of many important circulatory phenomena at
the atmospheric or ocean level, these may cause catastrophic consequences, for
instance a quicker collapse of the Antarctic ice sheets than previously projec-
ted.

A final and crucial reason for concern according to the IPCC report is
also the distribution of impacts: climate change has an adverse impact on the
distribution of these negative effects, which means that some regions, typically
the poorer ones, would be more affected than others.

As you can see from this slide, on the left we have two potential paths of
development: one in which the temperature is kept below the 2°C compared to
the preindustrial level, and one where the temperature is increasing in an
uncontrolled way. This second path is that consistent with the “business as
usual” mode: if we do not doing anything against climate change, we are
embarking in the high-temperature scenario.

The point is that climate change has a very strong inertia, like a tanker sai-
ling across the sea: we cannot stop it immediately. In order to stop it, we should
start acting well in advance, which means we do not have 80 or 100 years to
keep the temperature below 2°C and, therefore, climate change under control:
we have between15 and 20 years to embark on the right path; if we are not able
to do this now, we will not reach our targets.

Where is the Paris Agreement leading us to? Considering that CO2 con-
centration is more than 400 ppm, keeping temperature below the 2°C target as
Paris aspires to, means that concentration levels should not exceed the 450
ppm; whereas the uncontrolled scenario is consistent with emissions leading to
a huge concentration of more than 1000 ppm.

Having said this, the Paris Agreement and the “nationally determined con-
tributions” (NDCs) are leading to a, more or less, “middle solution”. Paris is a
good agreement since it implies efforts towards emission reduction: but it is
still far from its own inspirational goal of the well below 2°C target.

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