 "Paris emission reduction pledges fall short of keeping global warming in check")
The emission reduction pledges of 119 countries under the Paris agreement will not be enough to keep the global temperature rise within two degree celsius by the end of the century over the pre-industrial era, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) concluded in an assessment.
It was not news. Experts across countries had concluded this days before. But, it became official when the UNFCCC secretariat released the report on Friday, as mandated by the 196 countries to do.
The report said, "It can be concluded that greater reductions in the aggregate global emissions than those presented in the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs which include the emission reduction pledges) will be required for the period after 2025 and 2030 to hold the temperature rise below two degree celsius above pre-industrial levels." The report took 2025 and 2030 as benchmark years because most countries have pledged their actions for a five or ten year period starting 2020 when the Paris agreement would become operational.
At a time when all countries have accepted that the Paris agreement would at best create a basis for ramping up the fight against climate change, the UN report set an official benchmark to measure the contributions of the countries against.
At the UN negotiations only reports commissioned or accepted by all countries become part of the deliberations. Therefore, the UN aggregate impact report holds value for the upcoming informal and formal negotiations to seal the Paris package - a legally binding agreement and other collective decisions that would set new rules by which countries would cooperate to reduce emissions and deal with its inevitable impacts.
The report concluded that the pledges held the potential of reducing the growth of global emissions growth in emissions by almost a third between the two decades of 2010-2030 when compared to 1990-2010.
But, it also concluded that with the current level of pledges the world would have consumed 748 gigatonnes of Carbon dioxide (Gt of CO2) space in the atmosphere. Scientists had earlier assessed that the world can accumulate a maximum of 1,000 Gt of CO2 in atmosphere to have a 66 per cent probability of keeping temperature rise within the safe limit of 2 degree celsius.
The draft of the Paris agreement provides for various options of how countries would be expected to increase their pledges over time. But, countries and groups of countries remain deeply divided over these options. The gap between the aggregated pledges of the world and what is needed to keep the global temperature rise in check is often referred to as the ambition gap and is acknowledged by all countries. They are not able to agree on which country should take on additional burden in coming years to fill that gap and what should be the basis for apportioning the responsibility.
The report noted that almost a quarter of the emission reduction pledges in absolute terms were conditional. This meant that countries had put conditions of finance and other means of implementation to achieve them. The report only took in to account explicit conditions and not the more subtle indirect ones, such as the one by India.
Countries have proposed different terminologies while demanding that the globe agree to a long term goal (targeting years between 2050 and 2100) for substantially reducing emissions. Terms like climate neutral, net zero emissions and decarbonisation by the end of the century have been proposed. But, these are hotly contested at the moment for the economic implications they hold for various developing countries without a burden-sharing formula being in place to apportion future responsibility of each country to cut emissions. The UN was not mandated to analyse the adequacy of each country's emissions but only look at the aggregate impact of the existing INDCs.
