Near-term climate hazards: how will they affect societies and stability?

Climate change risks, and their associated impacts, have the potential to affect every natural and human system. These risks are accelerating; what is a small risk in the near term could become an overwhelming impact in the medium or long term. Yet while current climate change risk assessments are both valuable and necessary, they are limited in scope by the speed with which new evidence of accelerating impacts emerge. There is a critical need for greater collective understanding of near-term climate hazards, including amplifying tipping points, about which the international community ought to be most concerned.

This event will present the latest research from an expert elicitation exercise that identified the near-term climate hazards that could create the biggest societal risks and impacts between now and 2030. It will highlight the extent to which we are appropriately monitoring and assessing these risks, how they are changing, and what mechanisms may amplify them. This research will be complemented by an in-depth look at how climate risks, including higher temperatures and sustained droughts, are impacting fragile environments in the Jordan Valley and the Sahel. These cases will illustrate the risks of cross-border and cascading climate impacts and consider how responses to destabilising near-term climate risks can be improved.

Speakers

Dr Daniel Quiggin Senior Research Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Programme, Chatham House

Baba Alfa Umar Clinical Psychologist, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales

Nada Majdalani Ecopeace

Chair

Glada Lahn Senior Research Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Programme, Chatham House

This event is a collaboration between the CASCADES project and the Accelerating Climate Impacts’ project, and is a part of London Climate Action Week.