‘Climate literacy’ essential for Lankans to understand environmental changes

by Ifham Nizam

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says despite efforts in place, initiatives to cut greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors must be stepped up to meet the world’s target of limiting warming to around 1.5 degrees Celsius.The IPCC released its ‘Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change’ report, assessing the measures put in place to reduce carbon emissions globally as well as their long-term impact on emissions goals.In a statement, the panel said global gas emissions should peak before 2025 at the latest and be reduced by 43% by 2030, while methane should be reduced by about a third to limit global warming to around 1.5 degrees Celsius.However, it said that it is almost unavoidable that the limit will “temporarily exceed” the temperature threshold but it could return to below the target by the end of the century.The third part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report was published on April 4. This report provide ample evidence of how climate change affects all living beings on earth.

It emphasizes that there is no fundamental challenge other than climate change which create many problems in all aspects of human well being such as food, water, health, shelter, education, employment etc. Not only humans but also other living beings are also under threat due to climate change.Hundreds of species of flora and fauna are already extinct due to issues accelerated by climate change and thousands of others are on the verge of extinction. There are three reviews under the sixth assessment report of IPCC, the world’s foremost body of climate researchers.The first published last August highlighted the scale of what human activity does to the climate system. The second titled ‘Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’ published on February 28 looks at the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change. It gives the clearest indication to date of how a warmer world is affecting all living beings on Earth. This is the Working Group III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report published this week.Supun Lahiru Prakash, an environmental activist and one of ten 2020 – United Nations Climate Change Learn champions in the world, speaking to Sunday Island says as a tropical island nation in the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka is highly vulnerable to climate change and we are experiencing many adverse effects of climate change.Between 2010 and 2020, fifteen times more people died from floods, droughts and storms in very vulnerable regions including parts of Africa, South Asia and Central and South America, than in other parts of the world.More than 40% of the world’s population are “highly vulnerable” to climate catastrophes. Many of the impacts of global warming are now simply “irreversible” according to the assessment.

“We are at the last minute of the hour to act against the climate change by cutting down greenhouse gas emissions significantly while investing more on adaptations as we, humans and nature are being pushed beyond abilities to adapt.”However, this report did not get enough attention internationally or nationally. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has to some extent overshadowed it in the international media.Prakash stressed that in Sri Lanka people are suffering from lack of basic needs and they know little about climate change related factors affecting mankind. Climate literacy is most wanting here. “If Lankans are aware of these things, they will demand essential policy changes and decisions to tackle the adverse impacts of climate change,” he said.Language too was a bottleneck in climate education in the non-English speaking world. Opportunities for communicating climate related information in native languages are limited as such information is mostly available in English.

Therefore, non-English speakers lack the knowledge to relate much of what the environmental change around them to climate change.

All this drives home the need for climate literacy in this country and imparting this is a task for today, not tomorrow