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Yesterday’s big report on climate change provoked — rightfully — a flurry of dire statements, calls for action, and a fair bit of panic. Since the news cycle has a tendency to move on to other things, we’re hitting pause and taking a closer look at what this means for development.
The first installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 6th assessment report landed this week after a COVID-19-induced delay, and it described a planet at a particularly pressure-filled moment.
On one hand, in more than three decades since scientists began warning about climate change, humans have failed to take the necessary steps in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to prevent the planet from warming 1.5 degrees Celsius. As a result, we are locked into a trajectory that is already considered dangerous, and an amount of warming that the Paris Climate Agreement was specifically created to prevent.
On the other hand, the report makes it crystal clear that warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius gets more catastrophic very quickly, and that transformational action taken right now can still prevent much worse scenarios in which large portions of the planet become uninhabitable.
It is not hyperbole to say that the entire concept of global development hangs in the balance.
Under the best-case scenario, a humanitarian system that is already under enormous strain will face more climate-induced disasters. For that reason alone, aid organizations that might see climate policy as its own siloed world should become very familiar, very quickly, with the state of negotiations around climate finance, loss and damage, and funding for adaptation.
At COP 26 in Glasgow, negotiators will begin hammering out what a post-2025 climate finance agreement ought to look like — even as high-income countries have yet to meet their 2020 obligations.
Under the IPCC’s higher-carbon scenarios, the disruption caused by climate change no longer resembles something that can be managed. That should drive home the point that development institutions have a clear and urgent stake in facilitating the transformative action that can still prevent such a future from materializing.
That means major bilateral donors such as the United States, China, and Japan shifting their financing from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Between 2000-2018, these three financed overseas projects that will have contributed 24 gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere by 2060, as my colleague Shabtai Gold reports.
The next piece of the report — from Working Group 2 — is scheduled for release in February 2022, and will zero in on climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability.
Read: How major economies are funding 'carbon lock-in' abroad
ICYMI: Our deep dive for Devex Pro subscribers gets into the nitty gritty of the financing needed to achieve global climate goals.
Unthinkable violence
“The food security and nutrition crisis is taking place amid extensive, systematic destruction of health and other services that children and communities rely on for survival.”
— Henrietta Fore, executive director, UNICEFOver 200 people — including more than 100 children — who were sheltering at a health facility and school in Ethiopia’s Afar region were reportedly killed in attacks by armed forces last Thursday. Such locations have been targeted as the conflict in Tigray spills over into neighboring regions: A Médecins Sans Frontières survey conducted before MSF has its in-country operations suspended, found that only 13% of health facilities were operating normally, while the others had largely been looted or otherwise damaged.
Read: Hundreds killed in health facility, school in Ethiopia's Afar region
Plan ahead
The artificial intelligence company Macro-Eyes was recently selected as the winner of the USAID’s Intelligent Forecasting Field Implementation Grant.
The company’s product, STRIATA uses machine learning “to forecast supply and demand at scale when conventional data is limited and uncertainty is the constant,” making sure store shelves aren’t empty or full of expired health products. Macro-Eyes rose to the top in a competition of 100 organizations working to model contraceptive needs in Côte d’Ivoire, Catherine Cheney reports.
“While forecasting and use of new data science is important for all health products, nowhere does it become more important than in sexual reproductive health and contraceptives,” says Prashant Yadav, a Macro-Eyes board member and Center for Global Development senior fellow.
Read: Taking stock — How predictive modeling can improve health supply chains
Early warning
On Monday, Guinea confirmed a case of Marburg virus disease — a highly infectious hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola. This is the first case of the disease ever reported in West Africa, Sara Jerving reports.
+ For more content like this, sign up for Devex CheckUp, the must-read weekly newsletter for exclusive global health news and insider insights.
In other news
The U.S. announced $165 million in fresh aid for Yemen on Monday, in hopes other donors will follow suit to help address the country's funding shortfall. [Reuters]
Clashes between the government and the Taliban in Afghanistan have resulted in the death of at least 27 children in the last three days, according to UNICEF. [BBC]
Australia will not commit to a more ambitious carbon emissions target, according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, following the release of the IPCC climate report. [France 24]
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About the author
Michael Igoe@AlterIgoe
Michael Igoe is a Senior Reporter with Devex, based in Washington, D.C. He covers U.S. foreign aid, global health, climate change, and development finance. Prior to joining Devex, Michael researched water management and climate change adaptation in post-Soviet Central Asia, where he also wrote for EurasiaNet. Michael earned his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, where he majored in Russian, and his master’s degree from the University of Montana, where he studied international conservation and development.
