Sustainable Development and Climate Change Mitigation

Introduction

Climate changes in a broader sense represent the consequences of complex abiotic and biotic processes and are reflected in statistically significant changes in climate parameters over longer periods. Various factors drive climate change. Biotic factors can be based on eco-system processes, such as photosynthesis or the circulation of water and nutrients in nature – non-anthropogenic factors, or on indirect and direct human action – anthropogenic factors (European environment agency, 2012).

What the public, today, means by climate change are changes that occur as the result of human action in the biosphere, that is, climate change in the narrower sense. Article 1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) defines climate change as changes in the climate, directly or indirectly related to human activities, that have changed the composition of the air (atmosphere) and thatcan be observed in a certain period, the independent of natural variations in climate parameters (United Nations, 1992, p. 7).

Research shows that extreme weather events, such as droughts or heavy rainfall and floods, have become much more frequent in recent decades. Ecosystems will be exposed to changes under the influence of “ecological shock” (Milojević et al., 2012). Many biological species will be condemned to extinction. Such global warming requires serious adaptation. Developed countries must strive to significantly reduce the gases emission that produce the greenhouse effect and it without delay. Developing countries can increase the emission of these gases for a certain period in order to enable them to achieve economic growth, after which they must start reducing it.

Climate change policy should not be reduced to the choice between a world in which high economic growth is achieved at the expense of high levels of harmful gases emissions in atmosphere and a world with low levels of emissions and a low rate of economic growth (Mills, 2009). Many measures aimed at climate change have a positive effect in areas such as: health care, energy security, environmental sustainability, etc. For example, in Africa, the opportunities on mitigate climate change are linked to the implementation of more sustainable land and forest management systems, the clean energy production (geothermal energy, hydropower, etc.), the improving public transport, and so on. The measures on mitigate climate change in this continent are likely to be compatible with further efforts aimed at promoting sustainable development (characterized by low gas emissions and resilience to climate change) (World bank, 2009a). The same is the case with Latin America (de la Torre et al., 2008).

Dependence on fossil fuels cannot be considered inevitable, given the inadequate approach in the search for alternatives. At a time when fossil fuel subsidies are $150 billion per year, public spending on energy research and development has been walked around $10 billion for decades. On the other hand, private consumption for research and development in the field of energy, ranges from 40 to 60 billion dollars per year and constitutes 0.5 percent of the total income of the private sector (Mazzukato, 2019).

The rapid action is necessary to limit global warming to 2 degrees. It is not, for us, a desirable level of global warming, but it is obviously the maximum of what we can do. The stabilizing warming at 2 degrees will require: 1) the integrating climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning (United nation, 2022); 2) the raising awareness and improving human and institutional capacities, financing climate actions, adaptation, impact reduction, warning (Krstić et al., 2020); 3) the promotion of mechanisms for effective planning and management of climate change in the least developed countries and small island developing states etc (United nation, 2022).