Managing Climate Change Risks in the Context of Other, More Urgent Risks to Humanity

Several British-sponsored state-of-the-art assessments of the global impacts of climate change on various climate-sensitive threats (namely, malaria, hunger, water stress, coastal flooding, habitat loss, carbon sink capacity, and coastal wetlands) using the major scenarios developed by the IPCC indicate that through 2085 to 2100, i.e., the foreseeable future, the contribution of climate change to such threats will generally be overshadowed by non-climate change related factors. For example, under the richest-but-warmest (A1FI) scenario, which is projected to increase global temperature by 4.0°C by 2085, climate change would be responsible for only 21% of the people at risk (PAR) of hunger. Translating estimates of PAR into mortality indicates that climate change would in 2085 be responsible for 4-10% of the mortality for hunger, malaria and coastal flooding under the four major IPCC scenarios, while the net PAR of water stress could increase from 0-72%.