Author／Roy Yi Ling Ngerng, Assistant Researcher, RSPRC
Our center director Chou Kuei-tien and assistant research fellow Roy Ngerng has collaborated with 57 leading researchers from 21 countries to write a new international report, '10 New Insights in Climate Science', compiling the latest insights on climate science over the last one year, to urge countries to adopt evidence-based approaches and take collective action to address the ongoing climate crisis.
The report is a partnership with global organizations Future Earth, the Earth League, and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and was launched by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa in January 2021.
In Chapter 7 written by Prof. Chou and Ngerng, together with authors Dr. Michelle Scobie, Prof. Clark A. Miller, and Prof. Bronwyn M. Hayward, the authors highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic has provided an opportunity for countries to reflect on whether their systems and institutions are equipped to cope with such transboundary challenges, and how the pandemic has therefore spurred governments and citizens to think urgently about how the systemic risks that are being exposed require us to recognize the fragility of government responses, and to therefore focus on adopting innovative approaches to governance in order to address other ongoing transboundary risks such as climate change.
The pandemic over the last year therefore requires societies and governments to think imaginatively and transformatively to adjust to the disruptive new normal, and how we need to develop a new social compact reoriented to a just world based on ensuring equal rights and access to health and well-being, so that our world can move toward more sustainable and resilient futures that are livable and resilient.
Importantly, the mobilization of youths and other social actors have helped accelerate the commitments by governments to act more responsively, and deeper engagement with youths – the future of this planet – as well as further global commitments such as the Green New Deal, are therefore necessary to push countries toward stronger and more collaborative responses.
In the end, the authors emphasize that we have approached an era which is “perhaps a last chance to create the social foundations for global collaboration to envision and build more humane and sustainable socio-ecological systems on scales from the local to the global,” and it is important that countries do not miss this opportunity to transform toward a sustainable future.
10 New Insights in Climate Science is an annual report that has been published since 2017 and gathers experts from the various fields to consolidate key climate insights for governments.
Dr. Michelle Scobie is a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of International Relation under, The University of the West Indies in Trinidad & Tobago. Prof. Clark A. Miller is Associate Director for Faculty and Professor at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society under the College of Global Futures at the Arizona State University in the United States. Prof. Bronwyn M. Hayward is in the Department of Political Science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and Director of The Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom.
Youth wearing goggles at the Fridays For Future protest on 27 September 2020 in Taipei, to emphasize the increasing disaster risk due to rising sea levels. Image from Taiwan Youth Climate Coalition.
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