Global average temperatures have already risen approximately 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels, and current national commitments are still projected to result in 2.5–2.9°C of warming by 2100, according to the UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2023. For governments and policymakers, this gap between pledged action and required outcomes is not a distant scenario. It is an active fiscal, social, and regulatory risk that demands structured, evidence-based responses.
The costs of inaction compound quickly. The World Bank estimates that without urgent climate action, over 216 million people could become internal climate migrants by 2050, while agriculture-dependent economies in Southeast Asia face disproportionate losses in crop yield, water availability, and rural income stability. For researchers and institutions designing climate responses, the pressure to deliver scalable, measurable solutions has never been greater.
Understanding what is climate change with precision, not generality, is the necessary foundation for every credible policy instrument, carbon pricing mechanism, and carbon removal strategy. This article provides a structured, data-grounded overview of climate change: its scientific basis, its drivers, its consequences, and how engineered carbon removal through biochar fits into an integrated climate response.
What is Climate Change?
What is climate change in a scientific sense? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines climate change as a long-term shift in global or regional climate patterns, primarily attributable to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere resulting from human activities since the mid-20th century. This definition distinguishes climate change from natural climate variability, which has always existed, by pointing specifically to the accelerated rate and anthropogenic origin of current shifts.
The clearest measurable indicator is global mean surface temperature. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6, 2021) confirms that human influence has warmed the climate at a rate unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years. Beyond temperature, climate change manifests through altered precipitation patterns, shifting growing seasons, glacial retreat, ocean warming, and increased frequency of extreme weather events.
For corporate sustainability officers, government planners, and climate finance professionals, this is not simply an environmental concern. It represents a systemic risk across supply chains, infrastructure investment, water resource management, food security frameworks, and long-term sovereign creditworthiness.
Causes of Climate Change
The drivers of climate change are well-documented and span multiple sectors of human activity. Understanding these causes is essential before designing any credible mitigation or carbon removal program.
1. Greenhouse Gases as the Main Driver
Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) are the primary greenhouse gases driving anthropogenic warming. According to the IPCC AR6, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere reached approximately 410 parts per million (ppm) in 2019, a level not seen in at least 2 million years.
Fossil fuel combustion remains the largest single source, contributing roughly 75% of total global greenhouse gas emissions as of 2020, per the IEA World Energy Outlook. The remaining fraction comes from industrial processes, waste management, and land use change, making sector-wide decarbonization both complex and urgent.
2. Deforestation and Land Use Change
Land use change, particularly tropical deforestation, accounts for approximately 10–12% of annual global CO2 emissions, based on data from Global Forest Watch and the IPCC. When forests are cleared for agriculture, logging, or infrastructure, the carbon stored in biomass and soil is rapidly released into the atmosphere.
Beyond direct emissions, deforestation reduces the planet’s natural carbon sink capacity. The Amazon Basin alone is estimated to have shifted from a net carbon sink to a net carbon source in some regions due to deforestation rates, a structural change with significant implications for global carbon budgets.
3. Agriculture and Biomass Waste
Agriculture contributes approximately 18–20% of global greenhouse gas emissions when accounting for enteric fermentation, rice cultivation, synthetic fertilizer use, and the open burning of crop residues. In Southeast Asia, the seasonal burning of agricultural waste, including rice straw, sugarcane bagasse, and palm frond residue, is a significant and often underestimated emissions source.
This same agricultural waste, however, represents one of the most scalable feedstocks for biochar production, converting a source of emissions into a long-duration carbon removal solution. This is a critical intersection point for climate policy in agrarian economies across the region.
Impacts of Climate Change on the Environment and Human Life
The consequences of climate change are already measurable across ecological systems, infrastructure, and human welfare. The following categories reflect the most material impacts documented in current peer-reviewed literature and institutional risk assessments.
1. Rising Global Temperatures
The IPCC AR6 reports that global mean surface temperature increased by 1.09°C between 1850–1900 and 2011–2020. Under current policy trajectories, warming of 2.5–2.9°C by 2100 is projected, with severe consequences for biodiversity, agricultural productivity, and heat-related mortality in tropical regions.
In Southeast Asia, even a 1.5°C warming scenario is projected to reduce rice yields by up to 10%, according to research published in Nature Food. This matters not only as an environmental statistic, but as a food security and political stability variable for densely populated, agriculture-dependent nations.
2. Sea Level Rise
Global mean sea level has risen by approximately 20 cm since 1900, with the rate accelerating in recent decades to roughly 3.7 mm per year between 2006 and 2018, per IPCC AR6. Thermal expansion of ocean water and the melting of ice sheets and glaciers are the primary contributing mechanisms.
For low-lying coastal nations and delta cities, including Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, and Dhaka, sea level rise poses direct threats to infrastructure, freshwater aquifers, and urban land viability. The World Bank has estimated that without adaptation investment, coastal flooding could affect hundreds of millions of people annually by mid-century.
3. Extreme Weather
Climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including heatwaves, droughts, tropical cyclones, and flooding. The IPCC attributes with high confidence the increased intensity of heavy precipitation events and the increased likelihood of extreme heat to human-induced climate change.
For insurers, infrastructure developers, and sovereign risk analysts, this translates into elevated loss exposure, shorter asset lifespans, and the need to revise baseline assumptions used in long-term capital planning. Attribution science has now advanced to the point where specific events can be statistically linked to climate change, strengthening the legal and financial case for climate liability frameworks.
4. Socio-Economic Impacts
The IMF has estimated that climate change could reduce global GDP by up to 7% by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario, with tropical and low-income countries facing losses two to four times larger than wealthier nations. This asymmetry in impact distribution is a key driver of climate justice discourse and international climate finance negotiations.
At the enterprise level, physical climate risks now appear in ESG disclosure frameworks and investor due diligence processes. Corporations operating in climate-sensitive sectors, including agriculture, real estate, energy, and logistics, face growing pressure to quantify and disclose these exposures in line with frameworks such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the emerging ISSB standards.
Read Also : What are Greenhouse Gases? Causes, Impacts, and How to Address Them
Solutions to Address Climate Change
Addressing climate change science requires parallel action across mitigation, adaptation, and carbon removal. No single solution is sufficient on its own, and the most credible net zero strategies integrate multiple approaches across sectors and geographies.
1. Transition to Renewable Energy
Decarbonizing the energy sector is foundational to any serious climate strategy. The IEA’s Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Roadmap calls for no new fossil fuel development beyond projects already approved as of 2021, alongside a massive scale-up of solar, wind, and clean hydrogen capacity globally.
For emerging economies, the energy transition is also an economic opportunity. The IEA estimates that clean energy investment needs to reach approximately USD 4 trillion annually by 2030 to remain on a net zero trajectory, creating significant demand for policy frameworks that de-risk private capital in clean infrastructure.
2. Improving Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency improvements across buildings, transport, and industry represent the lowest-cost abatement lever available in most economies. The International Energy Agency estimates that efficiency measures could deliver more than 40% of the emissions reductions needed by 2040 under a net zero pathway.
For industrial players and corporate sustainability teams, this translates into both a financial and a regulatory imperative, as energy costs rise and carbon pricing mechanisms expand. Building energy codes, appliance standards, and industrial process optimization are among the most direct policy tools available to governments.
3. Reforestation and Forest Protection
Nature-based solutions, including reforestation, afforestation, and the protection of existing forests, are estimated to provide up to 30% of the cost-effective mitigation needed by 2030, according to research published in Science (Griscom et al., 2017). Protecting high-carbon ecosystems such as peatlands, mangroves, and old-growth forests is particularly critical because these systems store carbon accumulated over centuries.
However, the permanence and additionality of nature-based carbon removals remain subjects of rigorous scrutiny in the voluntary carbon market. The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) has emphasized that nature-based credits must meet Core Carbon Principles (CCP) standards to qualify as high-integrity offsets.
4. Technological Innovation
Carbon capture and storage (CCS), direct air capture (DAC), and engineered carbon removal technologies are increasingly recognized as essential components of the net zero toolkit. The IPCC AR6 states that limiting warming to 1.5°C will require carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in the range of 100–1,000 GtCO2 over the 21st century to compensate for residual emissions that cannot be eliminated by mitigation alone.
Biochar carbon removal stands out as a technology-ready, scalable, and co-beneficial CDR approach, particularly in economies with abundant agricultural biomass feedstocks. Its integration into carbon credit markets, soil improvement programs, and waste management frameworks positions it as one of the most actionable near-term solutions available today.
Carbon Economy-Based Solutions: Turning Agricultural Waste into Climate Value
One of the most underutilized opportunities in climate strategy is the conversion of agricultural residue into durable carbon removal through biochar. Biochar is a stable, carbon-rich material produced by heating biomass under limited oxygen conditions, a process known as pyrolysis. Rather than allowing crop residues to decompose or be burned openly, both of which release CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, pyrolysis locks the carbon into a solid form that can persist in soil for hundreds to thousands of years.
From a carbon market perspective, biochar carbon removal generates high-quality, measurable, and long-duration carbon credits that align with the durability criteria increasingly prioritized by corporate buyers seeking credible offsets for their net zero commitments. Unlike some nature-based solutions, biochar removals are trackable through quantifiable inputs and outputs, making measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) more straightforward under recognized international carbon certification standards and publicly auditable carbon registries.
The economic logic is equally compelling. Agricultural waste that previously represented a disposal cost or an emissions liability becomes a revenue-generating feedstock. For farming communities and agribusiness operators, this creates a new income stream while simultaneously contributing to carbon removal goals. For corporate ESG programs seeking high-integrity carbon credits, biochar provides supply with measurable permanence and traceability.
In Indonesia, this approach is increasingly relevant in the context of Perpres 110/2025, which replaced the earlier Perpres 98/2021 and provides the updated legal foundation for the national carbon economy, including the implementation of the National Carbon Economic Value (NEK) framework. As Indonesia builds out its regulatory infrastructure for carbon trading, biochar projects that are structured with robust MRV and third-party verification by an accredited independent verification body are well-positioned to participate in both the domestic carbon market and international voluntary mechanisms.
The intersection of agricultural waste management, carbon removal, and carbon credit revenue is precisely where biochar carbon removal delivers the most integrated value. This is not a theoretical proposition. It is an operational model that aligns the incentives of landowners, corporates, and governments around a shared climate outcome.
Climate Change Is a Challenge That Requires Cross-Sector Collaboration
What is climate change if not the defining coordination problem of our era? No single actor, whether a national government, a multinational corporation, or a research institution, can address its scale and complexity alone. Effective climate action requires the alignment of policy frameworks, private capital, technology deployment, and local implementation across sectors and borders.
For organizations that are ready to move from commitment to action, the practical next step is identifying which carbon removal or carbon credit strategies are most appropriate for their specific context, whether that means developing a biochar project on underutilized agricultural land, structuring a carbon credit program that meets international certification standards, or building an ESG climate compliance strategy aligned with current regulatory requirements.
The Planet Carbon team works with project developers, corporations, and government agencies across the full cycle of carbon solution development, from project feasibility and MRV design through to commercialization and market access. If your organization is working through the strategic or technical dimensions of a climate response, we welcome the opportunity to have a structured conversation. Reach out to the Planet Carbon team to schedule a discussion at your convenience.
Referensi:
- UNEP: Emissions Gap Report 2023, projected warming under current national commitments – https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2023
- World Bank: Internal Climate Migration Projections to 2050 – https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechange/publication/groundswell-report
- IPCC: Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), Working Group I, 2021 – https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/
- IEA: World Energy Outlook 2022 and Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Roadmap – https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022
- Global Forest Watch: Deforestation and land use emissions data – https://www.globalforestwatch.org/
- Nature Food: Rice yield projections under 1.5°C warming, Southeast Asia context – https://www.nature.com/nfood/
- IMF: Climate Change and GDP impact projections – https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change
- Science (Griscom et al., 2017): Natural climate solutions, nature-based mitigation potential – https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1710465114
- ICVCM: Core Carbon Principles (CCP) for high-integrity voluntary carbon markets – https://icvcm.org/the-core-carbon-principles/
- Peraturan Presiden Nomor 110 Tahun 2025 (Perpres 110/2025): Legal basis for Indonesia’s National Carbon Economic Value (NEK) framework – https://peraturan.go.id/id/perpres-no-110-tahun-2025
Read Also : 10 Effective Ways to Reduce Carbon Emissions in Everyday Life