CO2 emissions: wealthy countries fail to submit new reduction plans
Environment — di Andrea Barolini
Governments around the world were supposed to revise their CO2 emission reduction plans — known as NDCs — by 23 September.
CO2 emissions: wealthy countries fail to submit new reduction plans
Governments around the world were supposed to revise their CO2 emission reduction plans — known as NDCs — by 23 September.
The twenty-seventh United Nations world climate conference – Cop 27, to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, from 6 to 18 November – has, in some sense, already begun. It did so on 23 September, a date that represented a crucial deadline for the credibility of the summit and of governments the world over. By that date, new NDCs (Nationally determined contributions) were supposed to have been submitted — that is, the greenhouse gas emission reduction plans that each nation is required to declare to the international community.
Current NDCs are not enough to meet climate targets
These are commitments that had already been put forward in the first instance at the Cop 21 in Paris, when the Agreement bearing the name of the French capital was adopted. Yet they proved spectacularly insufficient: while science has indicated the need to avoid exceeding 2 degrees Celsius of increase in the average global temperature relative to pre-industrial levels, those NDCs would have put us well above 3 degrees. Staying as close as possible to 1.5 degrees matters enormously, since the difference — even half a degree — would be immense in terms of impact on human beings, biodiversity, economies and territories.
For this reason, the United Nations asked governments to revise their commitments. This was done, partially, in previous years. But the situation has improved only marginally: the data indicate that temperatures should now remain below the 3-degree threshold, but that we are still very far from the more ambitious target of the Paris Agreement, set at 1.5 degrees.
Only 23 countries have submitted new plans — and not always more ambitious ones
Hence the request from the UN, and in particular from the Unfccc — the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is responsible, among other things, for organising the Cops — to do the homework all over again. Because without serious and coherent commitments from states, even the international summits themselves are beginning to look like tiresome processions of presidents, ministers and chief executives.
And so the deadline of 23 September arrived — and was blithely ignored by the vast majority of the world's nations. In particular by the wealthiest ones, whose economies are the most energy-intensive and therefore have the greatest impact in terms of climate-altering emissions. The new NDCs were submitted by only 23 countries, out of the nearly 200 that have ratified the Paris Agreement. Nor do these represent particularly virtuous behaviour, since those who met the deadline confined themselves to detailing the policies through which they intend to meet the emission reduction targets already set in the past, rather than proposing new and more ambitious ones.
The glaring case of Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil
That said, among those who submitted new NDCs are countries such as Egypt (the hosts of Cop 27), Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates (which will host Cop 28 in 2023). The first aims to achieve renewable energy production equal to 42 per cent of the total by 2035. The second has raised its emission reduction target for 2030 from 29 to 32 per cent. The third, likewise, has revised its commitments from 23.5 to 31 per cent.
Australia and Brazil, too — countries that emit large quantities of CO2 — have revised their targets upwards: the former from 26–28 to 43 per cent (by 2030, relative to 2005) and the latter from 37 to 50 per cent (with the same deadlines and reference points). But in the case of the nation currently governed by the climate sceptic Jair Bolsonaro, this may be an illusion: to inflate the figures, according to an analysis by Climate action tracker, the method used to calculate the baseline emissions — those of 2005 — is said to have been changed. Overall, Brazil's current plan would actually be even less ambitious than its previous one.
Further commitments have come from countries such as Uganda and Gambia, whose emissions are, however, marginal relative to the global total.
No new plans from China, India, Russia, the United States or the European Union
Above all, no new plans have been forthcoming from the major economic and industrial powers of the global North. China, India, Russia and the United States all missed the United Nations deadline. So did the European Union, which is nonetheless reportedly considering an improvement to its NDCs, though one not yet discussed either by Parliament or by member states.