SUSTAINABILITY

Climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international organization sponsored by the United Nations (UN), presented October 6th in South Korea a report on the harmful consequences of global temperature rise for the welfare of humanity. The institution urges States to implement policies to minimize the impact of global warming on the food security of the world’s population and the availability of drinking water. On the other hand, several universities in the region, which met in Colombia October 1st, created the Center for Sustainable Development Objectives (ODS) for Latin America and the Caribbean. Its purpose is to build public-private partnerships for countries to comply with the ODS and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Due to the international importance of global warming, national governments are expected to adopt executive and legislative measures to foster the transition to a green economy in the coming months.

The IPCC report considers a response at the national and international levels to prevent an excessive rise in global temperature to be vital. These include the need for UN member states to increase financing aimed at transforming production chains into more sustainable systems. In addition, they should increase education campaigns to raise awareness about climate change and the measures that can be taken individually to combat it.

The ODS Center argues that national governments and the private sector must build climate change alliances to prevent floods and famines. One of the possibilities is the development of an agricultural industry that uses less water per unit of product, thus reducing environmental pollution and water consumption. The institution considers that Latin America is obliged to act since it is the region with the greatest wealth in biodiversity and water on the planet.

Next steps

In keeping with the commitment made by the international community in the Paris Agreement in 2015 to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 2°C compared to pre-industrial times, Latin American national governments must implement new measures such as encouraging the transition to a green economy and the development of a more sustainable agricultural industry in the coming months.