Climate change in the UKOTs an overview of the ... - JNCC - Defra

social development, physical planning,
and even human security. The all-encompassing
nature of climate change means
it could affect every aspect of human wellbeing,
from jobs and livelihoods, to health,
food security, leisure and recreation.
Responding to climate change therefore
needs action on several different fronts.
We need to dramatically reduce and cap
greenhouse gas emissions while also putting
in place measures to prepare for and
respond to current and future climateinduced
changes. Without some stabilisation
of greenhouse gases within a
timeframe and at a level that allows
ecosystems to adapt naturally to change,
the consequences for man and nature are
expected to be dire. With this in mind, the
United Kingdom and the European Union
have set a target to ensure that global temperatures
do not rise by more than 2°C
above pre-industrial levels.
Another complexity of climate change stems
from the uncertainty that surrounds it.
Although there is consensus that change is
taking place, there is less agreement on what
proportion of the change is natural climate
variability and what proportion is humaninduced.
This makes it difficult for individual
countries to decide what resources to allocate
to reducing human impact on the climate
system (mitigation) and what to spend
Coastal erosion in Cayman Island
Credit: Department of the Environment, Cayman
Island Government
“
Addressing climate change
requires a global agreement
for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions as well as local
commitment to action.
”
on strengthening their structures to withstand
change (adaptation).
Uncertainty about the patterns of change
and the scale of the impacts further complicates
matters. Although the evidence of
past change points to certain possibilities,
there is still an element of the unknown.
Countries therefore find themselves faced
with the prospect of planning for a very
uncertain future. Not only are there many
unknowns about the full extent of future
impacts, current impacts are not well
understood in many countries, including
some United Kingdom Overseas Territories
(UKOTs) where there has been little
monitoring to date.
Addressing climate change requires a
global agreement for reducing greenhouse
gas emissions as well as local commitment
to action. Part of the difficulty in
forging a global agreement is that
although everyone is affected, not all have
contributed equally to the problem; some
of the places that have contributed least,
such as small islands, will be affected the
most. There are also high costs associated
with reducing emissions and finding alternatives
to fossil fuels, which are a large
source of greenhouse gases.
There is still some debate about how the
challenge of climate change should be
financed. Funding adaptation requires
many tens of billions of dollars each year
(Oxfam, 2007). Financing for the most
urgent and immediate adaptation priorities
of the least-developed countries (LDCs)
alone is likely to cost $1–2bn. But by 2007,
the industrialised countries had only
15