Expert urges adoption of climate change attribution science

An expert has warned that there is an urgent need to begin to employ climate change attribution science in the Global South.

This call was made by Francois Engelbrecht, professor of climatology at the Global Change Institute (GCI) of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The field climate change attribution science investigates whether, or to what degree, human influence may have contributed to extreme climate or weather events.

Speaking Thursday at The University of the West Indies’ Faculty of Science and Technology public lecture on ‘Loss and Damage: The urgent need for climate change attribution science in the Global South’, Engelbrecht says that determining this will assist in securing a future free from climate injustice.

He argued that when the time comes for policymakers to consider climate justice through loss and damage funding, the more solid the scientific evidence experts could present in attribution research, the better their case would be in their pursuit.

“We need to become as strong as we possibly can, and efficient as we possibly can in supporting our countries, the policymakers, the important insurance companies in their efforts to take care of these compensations,” Engelbrecht said.

He further shared that the best approach was for Global South scientists to begin to respond by developing in-house probability-based and event-attribution systems in research mode and operational mode.

At the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference 2022 (COP27) in Egypt, an agreement was reached for the creation of a Loss and Damage Fund

The fund aims to provide financial assistance to low-income and vulnerable nations who are impacted by the effects of natural disasters caused by climate change.

DIFFICULT DISCUSSION

According to the UN, developing countries are the most at risk and suffer a disproportionate burden when experiencing the adverse impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels and extreme weather events

“We don’t have a G20 (an international forum, made up of 19 countries and the European Union) that is particularly big on reparatory justice, and the climate attribution studies is going to be the basis for the discussions that we will have related to loss and damage,” said Senator Matthew Samuda, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation.

“As the world warms, loss and damage is going to become more and more apparent, more and more expensive, and more and more hurtful to societal stability...we are seeing the awful effects of our slow onset events.”

The minister said that these were the very events that made it difficult to maintain social cohesion and manage the economy.

Sharing some examples of these gradual occurrences, including the yearly drought that prevents health facilities and educational institutions from operating due to a lack of water, land loss in low-lying areas that impacts tourism, and saltwater intrusion that degrades soil quality and lowers yields for farmers, Samuda pointed out that “Jamaica lives climate change” and that it was ultimately affecting every part of persons’ lives and every sector in the economy.

He asserted that Jamaica needs to decarbonise its economy.

In addition, he said it was imperative that the science of all this be communicated and explained to the populace.

If not, he said, it would become extremely difficult to inform a developing nation’s citizens that their country is being asked to develop in a way that is frequently more costly, time-consuming, and challenging to handle.

“It’s a difficult discussion. But the science, and bringing academia along and having our NGOs that don’t have the sort of trust deficit that the politicians do, is incredibly important to lay the wicket for politicians to have the economic discussion,” he said.