Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-16 (section)

=== FAQ 16.1 | What are key risks in relation to climate change? ===

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''A few clusters of key risks can be identified which have the potential to become particularly severe and pose significant challenges for adaptation worldwide. These risks, therefore, deserve special attention. They include risks to important resources such as food and water, risks to critical infrastructures, economies, health and peace, as well as risks to threatened ecosystems and coastal areas.''

The IPCC defines key risks related to climate change as potentially severe risks that are relevant to the primary goal of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty to avoid ‘dangerous human interference with the climate system’, and whatever the scale considered (global to local). What constitutes ‘dangerous’ or ‘severe’ risks is partly a value judgement and can therefore vary widely across people, communities or countries. However, the severity of risks also depends on criteria like the magnitude, irreversibility, timing, likelihood of the impacts they describe, and the adaptive capacity of the affected systems (species or societies). The Working Group II authors use these criteria in various ways to identify those risks that could become especially large in the future owing to the interaction of physical changes to the climate system with vulnerable populations and ecosystems exposed to them. For example, some natural systems may be at risk of collapsing, as is the case for warm-water coral reefs by mid-century, even if global warming is limited to +1.5°C. For human systems, severe risks can include increasing restriction of water resources that are already being observed; mortality or economic damages that are large compared with historical crises; or impacts on coastal systems from SLR and storms that could make some locations uninhabitable.

More than 120 key risks across sectors and regions have been identified by the chapters of this report, which have then been clustered into a set of 8 overarching risks, called representative key risks, which can occur from global to local scales but are of potential significance for a wide diversity of regions and systems globally. As shown in Figure FAQ16.1.1, the representative key risks include risks to (a) low-lying coastal areas, (b) terrestrial and marine ecosystems, (c) critical infrastructures and networks, (d) living standards, (e) human health, (f) food security, (g) water security and (h) peace and human mobility.

These representative key risks are expected to increase in the coming decades and will depend strongly not only on how much climate change occurs, but also on how the exposure and vulnerability of society changes, as well as on the extent to which adaptation efforts will be effective enough to substantially reduce the magnitude of severe risks. The report finds that risks are highest when high warming combines with development pathways with continued high levels of poverty and inequality, poor health systems, lack of capacity to invest in infrastructure, and other characteristics making societies highly vulnerable. Some regions already have high levels of exposure and vulnerability, such as in many developing countries as well as communities in small islands, Arctic areas and high mountains; in these regions, even low levels of warming will contribute to severe risks in the coming decades. Some risks in industrialised countries could also become severe over the course of this century, for example if climate change affects critical infrastructure such as transport hubs, power plants or financial centres. In some cases, such as coral reef environments and areas already severely affected by intense extreme events (e.g., recent typhoons or wildfires), climate risks are already considered severe.

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'''Figure FAQ16.1.1 |''' '''Presentation of the eight representative key risks assessed in this report (and their underlying main key risks).'''

Box FAQ 16.1

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