Legislation promoting ways to adapt to climate change, recently submitted to the Diet, will require both national and local governments to work out plans to cope with and reduce damage from global warming, such as worsening floods due to extreme weather, intrusion of new diseases and decline in the quality of agriculture. Despite measures taken to fight climate change, further rises in global temperatures in coming decades appear unavoidable, the impact from which is already affecting our lives today. Adapting to climate change will require steady efforts based on a long-term strategy, so the efforts need to start today.
The Paris accord was adopted in 2015 by both developed and developing countries at a United Nations conference on climate change. Based on voluntary efforts by participants to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, the agreement aims to keep the rise in average global temperature from pre-industrial levels well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue efforts to cut the increase even closer to 1.5 degrees. There is no guarantee, however, that the goal will be achieved. The United States, the world's second-largest emitter after China, has announced its departure from the Paris agreement under the administration of President Donald Trump. The sum total of plans submitted by countries taking part in the accord is deemed insufficient to keep temperature rises below the levels feared to cause severe damage, such as more frequent natural disasters and destruction of ecosystems.
Global warming is progressing. The world's average temperature is already about 1 degree above pre-industrial levels. A special report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the average temperature may climb to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels as early as the 2040s. The Meteorological Agency says Japan's average temperature has been rising by 1.2 degrees every century. One forecast says the temperature here will increase faster than the global average, increasing by as much as 5.4 degrees by the end of the 21st century compared with 100 years earlier.