Kate Holt/AusAID [CC BY 2.0 (https-//creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

This article was originally published on Horizon Magazine. 

“The most cost-effective climate change actions are also those that could help us achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) such as ending poverty and hunger, according to Dr Keywan Riahi, director of the energy program of the International Institute Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, who says the first step should be to cut our energy demand.

He researches the link between climate and development and contributed to the IPCC assessment published on 8 October, which looked at the impact of global warming of a 1.5˚C increase and how to limit it to this level.

The IPCC report looks, among other things, at the impact of climate change on development. What do we know now that we didn’t before? ‘What the report really clarifies well is the big difference between 1.5 and 2 (degrees), in terms of impact. Half a degree really matters. In terms of the most vulnerable, we have much higher exposure and a lot more extreme events if we don’t manage to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Before the report it was not so clear that there was such a big difference.’…”

Read on at: Horizon Magazine.