The mindset that created the climate crisis is not going to help us get out of it. The warning given by the UN climate panel this week, with the new report on the socio-economic impacts caused by climate change, indicates that global society still needs to learn to connect the dots between human development and the health of the planet.
For those who still thought that global warming would only deal with a warmer world, the ripple effects are impressive: lack of water; malnutrition; crop loss; deaths from heat waves and extreme events such as floods; infectious diseases, diarrheal diseases and even mental disorders. These impacts are already registered today.
Warming changes the entire planet and we humans are in the pack.
However, human inclusion as part of the natural system was not obvious for the philosophical basis of socioeconomic development adopted in most parts of the world since industrialization, influenced by Cartesian, positivist and reductionist thinking. Taken for granted and inert, nature was left out of the human development formula.
Linear thinking materialized in production lines, which go from extraction to disposal and leave out waste and pollutants, called environmental externalities.
Carbon, the climate’s biggest villain, is just another reject from the economic production line, as are other greenhouse gases, emitted mainly by fossil energy sources and deforestation.
Who pays the bill is the whole society, but mainly the poorest and most vulnerable segments. The UN report revealed the social cost of carbon for the country: each ton of gas emitted in the world costs Brazil US$ 24 (R$ 124) in climate damage.
This is where the need for climate adaptation policies comes in. Aimed at preparing the ground and containing the proportion of damage, they can end up generating even more disastrous impacts if they are poorly planned. It’s what the climate panel report called maladaptation.
Among the examples of what not to do to try to contain the damage of extreme weather events are technologies for modifying solar radiation – a palliative of low effectiveness – and the afforestation of lands where there would naturally be no forests – as is common in grassland biomes, in the cerrado and caatinga.
Instead of restoring the ecosystem, unsuspecting intervention on how species deal with that environment ends up affecting biodiversity and has the opposite effect: it generates environmental degradation.
Another measure negatively evaluated by the climate panel is the construction of walls to contain floods. As they get more intense, they break down barriers and increase the proportion of the disaster, generating even more negative impacts.
While linear thinking bets on a wall to contain an external enemy, under the mentality that the natural system would be separated from the human, complex thinking calibrates the focus to understand systemic relationships.
That is, complexity assumes the web of connections of living systems and their constant movements. From there, it is possible to estimate the cascading effects and create public policies integrated in the different portfolios of a government. The complex look at natural systems still allows for an asset: transforming negative impacts into positive ones.
A good example is the practices of coexistence with the semi-arid region, in the Brazilian Northeast. The region is one of the most vulnerable to the climate, already experiencing longer droughts and can experience warming of up to 8ºC. In recent years, simple measures such as the construction of cisterns for water storage have already improved the relationship of rural communities with the aridity of the sertão.
Investment in plants and livestock adapted to the semiarid region also promises to extract economic advantages from the region. There is also a bet on wind energy, which in theory also reduces the competitiveness of hydroelectric plants for the use of water in the Northeast.
Another fundamental point that is starting to enter the UN negotiations on climate and biodiversity is the prioritization of solutions based on nature. Planting trees, for example, captures carbon and stores it throughout the plant’s body, with additional benefits of biodiversity services and rainfall generation. In addition to reducing emissions, the action also helps adapt to climate change.
This means taking inspiration from the natural system to find more complete solutions, rather than inventing reductionist solutions, such as the aforementioned technologies for changing solar radiation.
Another stopgap invention is the use of geoengineering to literally store greenhouse gases underground – akin to sweeping dirt under the rug.
In addition to assessing climate adaptation measures, the new UN climate panel report pointed out correlations between climate policies and all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals – which include items such as education, gender equality, energy, peace. and eradication of poverty.
The conclusion is that the climate factor needs to be included in a transversal way in the development planning, with a deep revision of the model. The UN proposes the concept of climate-resilient development as one that bets on climate policies as a way of sustainable development.
In 1946, in the context of nuclear threats, Albert Einstein wrote in a telegram reported in The New York Times that “a new kind of thinking is essential for humanity to survive and move to higher levels”.
The phrase became famous under the version “you can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created it”, also attributed to the physicist. More than immediate and urgent actions, the climate crisis calls humanity to review the way of thinking about human development, inexorably linked to environmental conditions.
Climate adaptation gives us one last chance to learn – in a hurry and in the midst of turmoil – to inhabit the planet.
