Melting glaciers, unbearable heat, and space junk: a month before crunch climate talks in the United Arab Emirates, a UN report published on Wednesday warns about irreversible impacts to the planet without drastic changes to connected social and physical systems.
The Interconnected Disaster Risks Report identifies thresholds it calls “risk tipping points,” described as “the moment at which a given socio-ecological system is no longer capable of easing dangers and providing its expected function” — after which the risk of catastrophe grows significantly.
It focuses on six places that connect the physical and natural world with human society: accelerating extinctions, groundwater depletion, mountain glacial melt, space debris, unbearable heat, and an “uninsurable” future.
The report’s lead author Zita Sebesvari said, “As we indiscriminately extract our water resources, damage nature and biodiversity, and pollute both Earth and space, we are moving dangerously close to the brink of multiple risk tipping points that could destroy the very systems that our life depends on.”
For example: underground water reservoirs represent a crucial freshwater resource around the world and today mitigate half of the losses of agriculture caused by droughts, which are being exacerbated by climate change.
But aquifers themselves are now draining faster than they can be naturally replenished: Saudi Arabia has already crossed the groundwater risk tipping point while India isn’t far behind.
In the case of accelerating extinctions, the report highlights the cascading effects of extinctions throughout food chains.
The report said, “The gopher tortoise, which is threatened with extinction, digs burrows that are used by more than 350 other species for breeding, feeding, protection from predators, and avoiding extreme temperatures.”
If the gopher tortoise goes extinct, the gopher frog that helps control insect populations will probably follow, initiating effects throughout the entire forest ecosystem of the southeastern United States.
Mountain glaciers that store vast amounts of freshwater are melting twice as fast as they did in the past two decades.
“Peak water” — the point when a glacier produces its maximum amount of water runoff due to melting — has been reached or is expected to be reached within the next ten years across small glaciers in Central Europe, Western Canada, and South America.
The report said, “The 90,000+ glaciers of the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush mountains are at risk, and so are the nearly 870 million people that rely on them.”
In the case of space junk, the report warns Earth’s orbit is at risk of becoming so full of debris that a collision triggers a chain reaction that endangers humanity’s ability to operate satellites — including those that provide vital early warning monitoring against disasters.
The report finds most solutions currently being implemented focus on delaying issues rather than genuinely addressing the root causes.
It said, “We need to understand the difference between adapting to risk tipping points and avoiding them, and between actions that delay looming risks and those that move us towards transformation.”
