The 21st United Nations sponsored Conference of the Parties (COP21) will be held in Paris this December. The goal of COP21 is to produce the first meaningful, legally binding international climate treaty since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.
Paris may be our last collective chance to enact meaningful climate action to prevent a 2ºCelsius (3.6ºF) rise in global temperatures within this century. Scientists warn that passing the 2ºCelsius tipping point may result in persistent, unpredictable, and extreme weather that will be disastrous for much of life on Earth.
In advance of COP21, countries have agreed to make greenhouse gas reduction pledges, called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC). These pledges will guide the negotiations. Each nation’s contribution is to be determined by national circumstance. No firm standards were set regarding pledges. We should all be concerned that, to date, most countries have made weak pledges that exploit this ambiguity.
The Citizens’ 2015 Global Climate Agreement Campaign has been organized to keep citizens, environmental leaders, and policymakers around the world engaged and informed about the status of country pledges and other issues related to the success of COP21. The Campaign has set the following standards we believe country COP21 pledges should reach:
1. As called upon by the UN, all countries should use their 1990 level of carbon emissions as a baseline from which to measure and pledge future reductions.
2. Industrialized countries should pledge to reduce their emissions by 25% by 2025 with further reductions in five-year increments, i.e., 40% by 2030, etc.
3. Less-industrialized countries should pledge to reduce their emissions by at least 15% by the year 2025 with further reductions in five-year increments, i.e., 25% by 2030, etc.
4. All countries should pledge to meet their national energy needs with 100% renewable energy by 2050—a challenging but achievable goal.
5. All pledges should adhere to the UN Conference framework of “fairness,” “escalating ambition” and “transparency.”
The UN has also called upon all nations to present the plans and policies they will implement to reach their reduction goals.
To date, 121 countries—the 28 countries of the European Union plus 93 more—have made pledges to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions over the next ten to thirty-five years. None of these countries meet all of our criteria and most fall woefully short. The pledges being made have one or more of the following failings:
Many countries, including the US, do not use the 1990 baseline year recommended by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Instead, they use an arbitrary date of their own choosing, or use a “business-as-usual model”.
Most pledges fail to meet the basic emission reduction targets for 2025 and 2030 that are set forth above.
Many pledges are conditional on other factors such as the provision of technical and financial resources or the continuation of a rise in GDP. Others fail to identify the policies they will use to implement their pledges. Every pledge has failed to commit to an economy based on 100% renewable energy by 2050.
Considering the pledges made so far, we are concerned that COP21 will fail to produce an agreement that will stabilize the earth’s climate. Some industrial countries such as Canada, Russia, South Korea, and New Zealand have offered pledges that provide minimal reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Other countries that on the surface appear to be making robust pledges, such as the US and the EU, have flaws in the ways in which they account for their reductions or offer few specifics on the policies needed to implement their pledges.
Only three countries have offered pledges that exemplify the kind of commitments that we feel are needed for the success of a new global climate agreement: The Marshall Islands, Monaco, and the State of Jersey, which is a British Crown Dependency but has rights to self-governance. These pledges appear in the Climate Policy Hall of Fame section of our campaign website.
We applaud the spirit with which COP21 has been organized, and its commitment to supporting a bottom-up, differentiated approach to pledges in order to build a new agreement. However, government pledges need to reflect the knowledge, will, and passion of their citizens to stabilize our global climate.
Citizens and groups worldwide should take the opportunity leading up to COP21 to examine the country pledges that have been made and to press their governments to strengthen them. Information about each nation’s pledge can be found at www.climateagreementcampaign.org
Lois Barber and Ron Israel are Co-chairs of The Citizen’s 2015 Global Climate Agreement Campaign. Both live in the USA.
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