 The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, published the final part of its sixth assessment report called the Synthesis Report on Monday, March 20. The report is a compilation of the IPCC's three previous assessment reports. These reports covered the science of climate change, its risks and impacts, and the means of adaptation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The document also covers the 2018 report on the consequences of global warming beyond the 1.5°C threshold as well as special reports on climate change, oceans and land. IPCC also states that human activities have caused global warming. The average surface temperature of the earth has risen by 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels between 2011 and 2020. The report also emphasizes that those who have contributed the least to the current state of the climate are often the most vulnerable to its impacts. Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people reside in regions that are considered highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In these vulnerable areas, human mortality due to climate-related events, such as floods and droughts, was 15 times higher from 2010 to 2020. The climate crisis has also caused significant impacts on the availability of food and water. Nearly half of the global population experiences severe water scarcity for some part of the year due to factors related to both climate and non-climate drivers. The biggest adverse impacts have been observed in the global South countries predominantly. The report also emphasized the discrepancy between the impact of emissions and their greenhouse gas contributions. According to the report, households with the highest per capita emissions, which constitute only 10% of total households, are responsible for 34-45% of global consumption-based household greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, the bottom 50% of households contribute a smaller percentage, i.e. 13-15% of these emissions. While the warnings issued in the IPCC report are stark, the text stresses that there is still a window for action, albeit one that is rapidly closing. Prioritizing equity, climate justice, social justice, inclusion, and just transition processes can enable adaptation and mitigation actions and climate resilient development according to the report. The importance of this is that there is going to be no further regular assessment report. That is the seventh assessment report will not come until the end of this decade. That is in 2030. So this will be the most definitive scientific study you will have with you for the next seven years. Of course, there will be little, little reports here and there trickling through, but this is going to be the most comprehensive report for the next seven years. And therefore, we should take the conclusions and recommendations of this report rather seriously because we are not going to get a revision until seven years down the line. So if I can summarize the main findings and recommendations of this report, the first of course is as we can see around us, the evidence is there, is palpable. We can see that the climate is changing and changing rapidly. There are all kinds of phenomena taking place, heat waves, storms, floods, forest fires, cold snaps, and these are visible every year we see the extreme rainfall events. So what this report also tells us is first that these are going to continue and that they are going to get worse. We are going to have more such extreme events more frequently because temperature is still rising. So that's the other major finding is that temperature is still rising. The only small silver lining in the cloud is that the rate of increase of temperature has slightly slowed down. After the NDCs of different countries have kicked in, they have managed to slightly slow down the rising temperatures. But as we can see now, it looks as if the target of 1.5 degrees Celsius is almost sure to be crossed. Global average temperatures will almost definitely be crossed by 2030. If at all you want to see that that doesn't happen, it will call for extremely huge emission cuts, evidence of which we are not seeing anywhere. We all have been talking about forests and the oceans absorbing a certain amount of carbon dioxide. The sinks which absorb the what the science tells us now is that the capacity of sinks to absorb carbon dioxide is going to get lower as temperature rise. That is if temperature rise today is 1 degree Celsius average, the absorptive capacity of the sinks are going to be less at 1.5. So you view out emissions, but you reduce the ability to be able to absorb the emissions, which means there will be more emissions sitting in the atmosphere than you are able to pull out of this. So things are getting worse on all fronts. And what this report tells us is we need to take action not yesterday, but today. There is no tomorrow even. But unfortunately, as you and I know, this action is not being taken. There are still vested interests, both political and political economic vested interests in the fossil fuel industries, vested interests politically in all these countries with corporate interests backing them. And that has not turned the corner yet. And therefore, whatever the seriousness of these reports, the momentum of climate change we are not able to arrest because the people who can really make the changes to bring about these are not doing so because of their vested corporate interests or their vested political interests.