During a major international interdisciplinary conference in Stockholm on sustainable development, it emerged that climate change and its effects may become much more severe than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has indicated.
One proposal made by the researchers was that a new UN panel focusing on the health of ecosystems should be established.
Glaciers
‘Up to now, climate change seems to have been underestimated by the research community. One major reason for this is the rapidly growing risk of dangerous threshold effects in the world´s glaciers, forests, land areas and seas, which reinforce climate impact. Sweeping social, ecological and economic changes in society are now required.
The resilience of the world´s human communities and ecosystems must be strengthened, according to Brian Walker, head of the international research network known as the Resilience Alliance.
For the first time in human history, the research community is seeing signs that global environmental changes are severely threatening welfare in our societies.
‘The world is in a completely new situation. The environment has become a development issue. Comprehensive changes have to take place in politics and administration, so that globalisation and growth work together instead of eroding the biosphere,´ says Carl Folke, Science Director at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University.
The key to a solution of the climate problem is, according to researchers, a matter of strengthening the resilience of the world´s ecosystems and their capacity for further development.
‘Since both the consequences of climate change and a large part of the solution depend on how we manage the world´s ecosystems, we propose that the Swedish Government should now hasten establishment of a counterpart to the IPCC, called the International Panel for Ecosystem Services (IPES),´ says Anders Wijkman, a member of the European Parliament (MEP).
Threshold effects
The idea is that the IPES can be a scientific body that conveys knowledge to the world´s governments in a way similar to IPCC. IPES could also generate supplementary knowledge ensuring that the IPCC´s climate work takes natural threshold effects into account.
‘On the home front, the Government should set up a new super-ministry responsible for sustainable ecological and economic development, immediately subordinate to the prime minister. Signs of this kind of development of the political system already exist: the appointment of a climate minister in Denmark and the new Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts in Australia,´ said Johan Rockström, head of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University.