IPCC Report Confirms Climate Change Impacts
Conservancy to Address Impacts, Help Plants and Animals Adapt to Changes in North Carolina
DURHAM, NC — April 7, 2007— Today, The Nature Conservancy in North Carolina highlighted the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and explained how those findings continue to guide and influence on-the-ground conservation efforts in the state—particularly along vulnerable coastal areas such as on the Albemarle Peninsula.
The second volume of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, released today, outlines an array of serious impacts that unmitigated climate change would have on human well-being and every ecosystem on Earth. Coral bleaching, flooding, shifting vegetation, changes in natural annual events such as spring flowering and bird migration, and adverse effects on human health are all predicted to increase.
The Nature Conservancy is working to reduce the sources of the threat, by promoting policies to reduce emissions from fossil fuels and by stemming deforestation. Conservancy scientists are pioneering climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies through projects that improve the ability of ecosystems to cope with warmer temperatures, altered precipitation, rising sea levels, and other changes.
“North Carolina’s Albemarle Peninsula is among the most vulnerable places in the world in terms of climate change impacts,” said Dr. Sam Pearsall, the Conservancy’s Director of Science. “The Albemarle landscape is a study in balance, where water is as much a part of the landscape as the land itself. Global climate change, however, is upsetting that balance, and rising seas threaten to forever change this complex ecosystem of estuaries, swamp forests, marshes, and meandering rivers.”
The effects of climate change are already visible on the Peninsula: the region’s peat soils are degrading quickly and natural communities are in retreat from saltwater intrusion. Unless something is done soon to protect the landscape and manage the inevitable ecological changes, the Albemarle Peninsula could well lose as much as a million acres to rising seas within the next 100 years.
“Although we must accept the virtual certainty that the landscape will change with the climate, this doesn’t mean we are powerless to preserve the natural diversity and richness of the Peninsula,” said Pearsall. “The Conservancy has designed a multifaceted climate change program for the Albemarle that includes land conservation, habitat restoration, and a variety of science-based adaptation techniques to increase the ability of ecosystems to adapt to changing climate forces.”
The first volume of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was released in February and confirmed that human activities—including emissions from power plants and automobiles, as well as deforestation—are the main cause of rising temperatures and climate change. These activities will continue to exacerbate major weather events, such as severe storms and droughts, and more chronic changes, such as increasing temperatures.
An international framework and federal policy from major emitter nations are critical steps in averting these impending impacts. The Nature Conservancy is calling on Congress to act swiftly by adopting effective climate policies, such as a cap on greenhouse gas emissions that will protect the viability of plants, animals, and human and natural communities around the world.
“The IPCC report is especially meaningful given this week’s Supreme Court decision finding that the Environmental Protection Agency has authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The IPCC and Supreme Court will push Congress to address the issue,” said Tom Cors, the Conservancy’s Government Relations Representative.
Similarly the IPCC report will contribute to the North Carolina Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change’s recommendations on how the state can reduce future impacts as well what policy measures will reduce North Carolina greenhouse gas emissions.
“On both the federal and state side, the question has shifted from are we going to do something to how much are we going to do,” adds Cors.
Well-designed climate polices can offer multiple benefits for biodiversity and human well-being, for example by creating incentives for protecting and planting forests to sequester greenhouse gas emissions, and by providing public funding to efforts to help humans, ecosystems, and species adapt to the impacts of climate change described in this report.
Nature Conservancy Executive Director Katherine Skinner also emphasized that many people will be directly and adversely affected by climate change.
“We love our North Carolina mountains and coasts. The mountain region will see more invasive species and our coast will experience rising sea levels. To protect our state’s natural beauty, we need to make sure that our unique natural systems are not thrown out of balance by climate change.”
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The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Learn more about the Conservancy’s climate change work at www.nature.org/climatechange.
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