0
Interview
5 June 2016 2.00 h

Javier Martín-Vide

Climate change expert

Late but still time to act

Professor and head of the UB's water research institute, he is one of Catalonia's main climate change experts

Where are we with cli­mate change?
Cli­mate change is al­ready upon us, with­out a doubt. There are few re­searchers and sci­en­tists who do not recog­nise that the planet is warm­ing up, and that global warm­ing is the most vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of cli­mate change. Yet there is a more de­ci­sive el­e­ment, which is that for the first time hu­mans who are be­hind it. Cli­mate change is noth­ing new; our planet has ex­pe­ri­enced it many times and will do so in the fu­ture. What is new is that in Earth's 4.5-bil­lion-year his­tory it is now that 7.3 bil­lion of the planet's in­hab­i­tants have the ca­pac­ity to leave a mark on the global cli­mate. Sci­ence con­firms it with a 95% or greater prob­a­bil­ity.
So we are de­stroy­ing the planet?
Hu­mans have al­ways mod­i­fied their im­me­di­ate en­vi­ron­ments. We have gath­ered, planted, used wood and stone for build­ing... but al­ways on a local scale. Now, since the end of the 20th cen­tury, hu­mans have the abil­ity to change the en­vi­ron­ment on a plan­e­tary scale.
Is the pub­lic notic­ing the ef­fects of cli­mate change?
The timescale of cli­mate change is not daily, but takes place over a longer pe­riod, so it is hard for the pub­lic to per­ceive it as a re­al­ity here and now. The pub­lic has more im­me­di­ate con­cerns, while cli­mate change takes place grad­u­ally.
It used to be easy to find peo­ple who said cli­mate change was ex­ag­ger­ated.
It's true, but that has changed. Polls say that about 90% of the pub­lic con­sider cli­mate change a fact. Para­dox­i­cally, when asked if they are ready to do some­thing to fight cli­mate change, a high per­cent­age of peo­ple say they are. But, when of­fered real op­tions, such as not using the car in favour of col­lec­tive trans­port –whether pub­lic or pri­vate– the per­cent­age drops dras­ti­cally. Yet, it is true that aware­ness of this new re­al­ity is greater.
The sit­u­a­tion is not good.
I per­son­ally stay away from cat­a­strophic views, be­cause if we want peo­ple to act ac­cord­ingly, with com­mon sense and doing the right things, we can­not put for­ward a fa­tal­is­tic vi­sion. I have few rea­sons to be op­ti­mistic, but I have to be as pos­i­tive as pos­si­ble. And pos­i­tive means that al­though the re­al­ity is dark, I have to do every­thing pos­si­ble as a cit­i­zen, even if it be only a grain of sand, to help turn the sit­u­a­tion around. We are eth­i­cally obliged to de­mand mea­sures from those who gov­ern us.
For ex­am­ple?
The so­lu­tion de­mands a change in our en­ergy, so­cial and eco­nomic mod­els. Our econ­omy can­not con­tinue based on non-re­new­able re­sources, such as fos­sil fuels. We burn them and they dis­ap­pear, for­ever. So, what is re­quired is a change of en­ergy and eco­nomic model, as a nat­ural tran­si­tion to make it vi­able.
Is there still time to stop cli­mate change?
There is still time to stop global warm­ing going over the fa­mous 2ºC com­pared with tem­per­a­tures in the prein­dus­trial era. We are still not over the limit, but we are well on the way, with more than one de­gree ac­cu­mu­lated. This makes a dras­tic re­duc­tion in green­house gas emis­sions es­sen­tial. And why 2ºC? Be­cause stud­ies in­di­cate that if the planet goes over this thresh­old, the re­sults will most likely be cat­a­strophic and ir­re­versible, such as an ir­re­place­able loss of bio­di­ver­sity, a dan­ger­ous rise in sea lev­els, and so on. The sit­u­a­tion is such that even if we emit­ted no more green­house gases, the planet would con­tinue to warm up for decades. We must act ur­gently, as was recog­nised in the COP 21 sum­mit in Paris in De­cem­ber.
Are gov­ern­ments be­gin­ning to do their part?
Paris was dif­fer­ent and more pos­i­tive than pre­vi­ous sum­mits. A se­ries of agree­ments were reached to halt warm­ing at the thresh­old men­tioned. They are agree­ments that in­clude al­most all coun­tries and the most in­ter­est­ing part, in my opin­ion, is that they are re­view­able every five years.
Is the re­duc­tion of emis­sions the main ob­jec­tive?
We are talk­ing about mit­i­ga­tion, re­duc­ing green­house gases, which is some­thing we can all play a part in. In fact, from the mo­ment we get up until we go to bed we are con­tribut­ing to emis­sions by using lights, trans­port, shop­ping with plas­tic bags. It all in­volves the con­sump­tion of re­sources and waste gen­er­a­tion. Yet, there is also the issue of adapt­ing. In other words, we will have to live in a world with en­vi­ron­men­tal and cli­matic con­di­tions very dif­fer­ent from the past. We have to read­just to re­duce the risks and take ad­van­tage of new op­por­tu­ni­ties.
New op­por­tu­ni­ties?
For ex­am­ple, in Cat­alo­nia there are busi­nesses in the wine sec­tor which are adapt­ing to cli­mate change be­cause they know that land in the Penedès area in the fu­ture will have tem­per­a­tures un­suit­able for the va­ri­eties used. So they are buy­ing land at an al­ti­tude of 800 me­tres in the Pre-Pyre­nees, which is un­cul­ti­vated land that could be ideal for vine­yards after a rise in tem­per­a­ture. These busi­nesses are mak­ing a fi­nan­cial ef­fort and adapt­ing and di­ver­si­fy­ing. There are also ski re­sorts. I think that in three decades they will not be vi­able for ski­ing. The con­cept of a ski re­sort will have to change to a moun­tain re­sort. Mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion are es­sen­tial.
Not every­where can plan.
Clearly, in poor coun­tries the pri­or­ity is eat­ing today. That's why, as we are all in the same ship, we are obliged to trans­fer fi­nan­cial re­sources to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, some­thing that the Paris agree­ments in­clude. We have to show sol­i­dar­ity on a global scale, for two rea­sons: if the ship goes down, we all go down, but also out of a sense of his­tor­i­cal jus­tice. The coun­tries that have put the planet in this sit­u­a­tion are de­vel­oped coun­tries, which have been burn­ing huge amounts of fos­sil fuels since the 19th cen­tury. What's more, all of the poli­cies for mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion are in­fused with the four pil­lars of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment: eco­nomic ef­fi­ciency, so­cial in­clu­sion, re­spect for the en­vi­ron­ment, and the pro­mo­tion of ed­u­ca­tion and cul­ture, which is the basis for the fu­ture.

Director of the IdRA

As well as being a professor of Physical Geopgraphy, Javier Martín-Vide is currently the director of the Institut de Recerca de l'Aigua, Barcelona University's water research institute. This interdisciplinary organisation includes around a hundred professors and researchers from different spheres related to water resources. Among them are biochemists, geologists, pharmacists, chemists, economists, geographers and even artists. “Now, for example, we are looking into tourism in Barcelona from the point of view of the economy, the law and the hydric footprint it leaves. We are seeing that a typical tourist consumes up to three times more water than a local resident. Why is that? Well, because the tourist is relaxed in a hotel and showers two or three times a day, and so on,” says the professor.

Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.

Published on

Most Viewed