Climate action needs more than conference accords

AS AN exercise in cooperative problem-solving, the G20 environment meeting in Bali last week hit the right notes. The delegates agreed to reduce the impact of land degradation and drought; increase protection, conservation and restoration of land and forest ecosystems sustainably; and to uphold the Paris Agreement on climate change. For good measure, Indonesia’s Environment Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar warned the forum of 19 countries and the European Union the world was in a climate crisis situation.

Evidence for her observation is ubiquitous. China is experiencing a record heatwave that has spread across half of the country, even to the normally frigid Tibetan plateau. Temperatures as high as 45 deg C have led many provinces to impose industrial power cuts as cities struggle to cope with a surge in demand for electricity. The mighty Yangtze River is drying up. So is the Rhine, the Danube, the Tiber and the Po, the Elbe and the Volga.

Extreme weather events span not just continents but much of the globe. North America is in the grip of heatwaves. Four of its major river systems are drying up. At the other extreme, one-third of Pakistan is underwater after non-stop rain from mid-June. There are floods along the Nile and the Amazon. The melting of a massive ice sheet in Greenland is set to raise global sea levels by nearly 27 cm by the end of this century.