UNEP Reports Top 16 Measures Can Avoid Crop Losses and Protect Climate and Lives

In a report formulated by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and a team of international experts from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) from Austria, the top 16 measures that could help in saving around 2.4 million lives every year, avoiding annual crop losses amounting to 32 million and protecting the climate by half a degree have been listed.

The report that has been financially supported by the Government of Sweden has identified a total of 130 such measures using the GAINS model from IIASA. Of these, 130 measures the top 16 have the capacity to achieve 90% reduction in CO₂ emissions by the year 2030.

The report emphasises on the fact that taking action on short term solutions will not be successful in preventing global warming and that governments need to take decisive action on greenhouse and CO₂ emissions. Some measures include recovering natural gas during the process of oil production and reducing black carbon emissions by replacing brick kilns and old cook stoves with cook stoves that are more efficient. The report has also talked about the social and economic benefits of adopting such measures. For the purpose of the report data from research work over the past ten years was used through the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Cloud Project and the assessment work of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) by the UNEP. The WMO and the UNEP recently released a report titled Integrated Assessment of Black Carbon and Tropospheric Ozone, which focused on the health, climate and agricultural benefits of implementing such measures on pollutants.