WORLD ALREADY FEELING EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE - WORSE TO COME SAYS UN SCIENTIFIC PANEL

19 February 2001

Amsterdam - At the adoption of a major new global assessment of the impacts of climate change, a UN meeting of scientists and policymakers has found that regional impacts, like flooding in Europe, are becoming more severe.

Expressing "high confidence that recent regional changes in temperature have had discernible impacts on many physical and biological systems", Working Group Two of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) concluded its meeting early Saturday morning. This finding follows on from the scientific findings of Working Group One in Shanghai last month which concluded that "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."

"It's time for governments, particularly the new Bush administration, to show that they're taking the reality of climate change seriously," said Bill Hare, Climate Policy Director for Greenpeace International.

"This new report shows that we are facing a climate emergency. The G8 Environment Ministers meeting in Italy next month should treat it as such. G8 countries are primarily responsible for climate change - they must take hard action to revitalise and conclude the negotiations over the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, which collapsed in The Hague last November.

Among the report's conclusions are that current rates of human-induced climate change:

- risk large scale and irreversible impacts, such as the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the shutting down of the Gulf Stream, and massive releases of greenhouse gases from melting permafrost and dying forests;

- will have severe impacts on a regional level. For instance, in Europe, river flooding will increase over much of the continent; and in coastal areas, the risk of flooding, erosion and wetland loss will increase substantially;

- and will have the greatest impacts on those least able to protect themselves from rising sea levels, increase in disease and decrease in agricultural production in the developing countries in Africa and Asia. "The threat of human activities, some time in the next several decades, triggering three metres of sea-level rise each from the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets must be enough to convince governments that they have to pull out all stops to get the climate negotiations back on track. Ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the Rio+10 summit in South Africa next year is a minimum first step," said Hare.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

- Bill Hare +31 6 212 968 99 or Susan Cavanagh +31 6 212 969 10

Visit www.greenpeace.org/~climate/climatecountdown