World will be forced to spend more on climate adaptation over next 40 years – Randers

13th March 2013

By: Terence Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

Font size: - +

Professor of climate strategy at the Norwegian Business School Jorgen Randers, who co-authored of the trailblazing 1972 book The Limits to Growth and last year authored 2052 – A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, has warned that investments related to climate adaptation will rise strongly over the coming four decades as country’s respond to more extreme weather-related disasters.

He is pessimistic, however, that these investments will be made ahead of the likely calamities, owing to an absence of national and international decision-making institutions that are able to respond to long-term imperatives, rather than react to short-term political pressures.

In a recent report entitled ‘Turn down the heat: Why a 4 °C warmer world must be avoided’, the World Bank spelt out the possible impacts weather impacts should the planet’s temperatures warmed by the 4 °C above preindustrial levels – a level many scientists believe is likely by 2100, unless policy action is taken.

The scenarios outlined included the inundation of coastal cities; increasing risks for food production and possible higher attendant malnutrition rates; dry regions becoming dryer and wet regions wetter; unprecedented heat waves, especially in the tropics; exacerbated water scarcity in many regions; an increased frequency of high-intensity tropical cyclones; and irreversible losses of biodiversity, including coral reef systems.

Speaking in Johannesburg at an event jointly organised by engineering group Arup and the South African unit of the University of Cambridge, and ahead of a meeting with the National Planning Commission, Randers lamented that the world was currently less sustainable than was the case in 1972 – the year he, Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows and William Behrens modelled 12 possible scenarios for the world between 1972 and 2100.

Evidence of this lack of sustainability could been seen, he said, in the fact that the world was still emitting twice as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere yearly than could be absorbed by forests and oceans, which was leading to a build up of carbon dioxide (CO2) and a rise in temperatures.

In the absence of “extraordinary” technological and governance breakthroughs, Randers’ latest modelling showed that the world economy would grow more slowly over the coming 40 years than had been the case over the preceding four decades.

This was not the result of resource constraints, but rather declining population growth rates and falling levels of consumption spending, partly as a result of the need to make higher climate adaptation-related investments.

The 2052 book’s forecast assumed a world population peak of only 8-billion in 2040, which was below most other global estimates, and that the rate of economic expansion would moderate as a result to well below the 3.5% yearly average between 1970 and 2012.

As a result the world economy could be only double its current size by 2050, rather than the fourfold increase being predicted by other economic forecasters.

As a consequence, world consumption would peak in the coming 20 years, while energy consumption would peak during the 2030s, when fossil fuel sources were still likely to account for 60% of production.

HOTTER WORLD

Given that energy-use assumption, total CO2 emissions were forecast to continue to rise for 20 years, before peaking and eventually declining to a point where they would be no higher in 2050 than they were in 2012.

Temperatures would, however, still exceed the 2 °C above the preindustrial “danger threshold” by 2050 and level off at “plus 3 °C” in 2080, before gradually declining.

Therefore, Randers argued that the combination of stagnating population and gross domestic product growth would provide an unplanned remedy to the problem of “endless growth on a finite planet”.

“Basically, we will just peter out.”

But this slowdown would occur too late to avoid “triggering a climate crisis and in the process we will have much unnecessary suffering”.

One direct cost would be the diversion of national investment capital and labour resources to repair and upgrade infrastructure damaged by increasingly frequent extreme weather events.

“Typically, this investment will only flow after the hurricane strikes and there is a decision to build a dyke. But in my view, we are unlikely to see societies deciding to build a dyke ahead of time,” Randers bemoaned.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

Comments

The content you are trying to access is only available to subscribers.

If you are already a subscriber, you can Login Here.

If you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe now, by selecting one of the below options.

For more information or assistance, please contact us at subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za.

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION