Europe ramps up climate-change fears

Abstract

A new report from the European Union focusing on the likely impact of climate change on the continent's ecosystems presents the prospect of major problems ahead and is being used to support wider efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, writes Nigel Williams. A new report from the European Union focusing on the likely impact of climate change on the continent's ecosystems presents the prospect of major problems ahead and is being used to support wider efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, writes Nigel Williams. The ecosystems that have underpinned all European societies until the present day and have helped European culture gain global significance will be disabled by climate change, according to a new report by EU scientists. Much of the continent's agriculture, which developed the vine and the olive and now involves many other crops and livestock, is threatened and much of the continent's wildlife is also at risk. Europe's modern lifestyles, from summer holidays in the Mediterranean and winter skiing trips to the Alps could become impossible if southern Europe's summer weather becomes too hot and winter snowfall disappears in the mountains. Such changes will have enormous ecological and economic impact. The force of last month's report lies in its setting out of the scale of the continent-wide threat to Europe's ‘ecosystem services’. This a relatively new but powerful concept, which recognises that essential elements of normal life — such as food, water, wood and fuel — that may generally be taken for granted, are all ultimately dependent on the proper functioning of ecosystems in the natural world. “Climate change will alter the supply of European ecosystem services over the next century,” the report says. “While it will result in enhancement of some ecosystem services, a large portion will be adversely affected because of drought, reduced soil fertility, fire, and other climate-change-driven factors.” “Europe can expect a decline in arable land, a decline in Mediterranean forest areas, a decline in the terrestrial carbon sink and soil fertility, and an increase in the number of basins with water scarcity. It will increase the loss of biodiversity.” The report marks a step change in Europe's own role in pushing for international action to combat climate change, as it will be used in a bid to commit the EU to ambitious new targets for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. The European Commission wants to hold back the rise in global temperatures to 2° C above the pre-industrial level. To do that it wants member states to commit to cutting back emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, to 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, as long as other developed countries agree to do the same. Failing that, the EU would observe a unilateral target of a 20 per cent cut. The Commission also wants to include methane and nitrous oxide, produced by mining, agriculture and transport, in the emissions trading scheme. Reducing their output would slow global warming, the report says. The Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, gave US president George Bush a preview of the report and new policy in a visit to Washington early last month ahead of growing calls for the US to act on climate change. Several major industrial companies including General Electric and DuPont, under the umbrella of the United States Climate Action Partnership, lobbied the federal government ahead of the president's State of the Union address last month to implement measures to curb greenhouse gases as they increasingly see the threat of climate change as damaging for their businesses and those of many other American companies. In Europe, there are many more direct threats, the report says. The cost of taking action to cope with sea level rise will run into billions of euros. Furthermore, “for the coming decades, it is predicted the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events will increase, and floods will likely be more frequent and severe in many areas across Europe.” The report also highlights the risk of increased flooding, and cites the upper Danube, which has suffered damaging floods in the recent past. More than 150,000 more people could be affected by floods of the Danube in Hungary as a result of climate change, the report argues. The report predicts that there will be some European ‘winners’ from climate change, at least initially. In the north of the continent, agricultural yields will increase with a lengthened growing season and a longer frost-free period. Tourism may become more popular on the beaches of the North Sea and the Baltic as the Mediterranean becomes too hot, but the overall negative effects will far outweigh the advantages, the report says.