‘Massive gaps’ seen in countries’ plans to tackle climate change -study
Despite the latest pledges by countries to tackle global warming under the Paris Agreement, scientists believe these pledges are “woefully inadequate” to prevent an alarming rise in global temperatures that will worsen droughts, storms, and floods around the world, a report out on Wednesday said.
Under the 2015 agreement, which was launched at the UN’s climate summit in 2015, 194 countries were required to define in what is referred to as a nationally determined contribution (NDC) what their plans are to combat climate change.
In pledges made through September, the NDCs would reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases by only 7% from 2019 levels by 2030, said the report titled “The State of NDCs: 2022.” It was written by the World Resources Institute (WRI) global nonprofit research group.
For a country to be aligned with the United Nations, its targets need to be six times that, higher, at least 43% higher, to become. Despite the fact that that is enough, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the global temperature rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees F), the report said that this is insufficient, as it had been in the past.
“It really looks like we’re hitting a bit of a plateau,” Taryn Fransen, a senior fellow at WRI and author of the report said in an interview. She added that the COVID-19 pandemic and economic woes may have mostly capped countries’ ambitions to boost their NDCs since 2021.
Current NDCs propose to reduce emissions by 5.5 gigatonnes compared with the initial NDCs from 2015, nearly equal to eliminating the annual emissions of the United States. But only 10% of that planned reduction has been pledged since 2021.
On the bright side, Australia and Indonesia did boost their NDCs this year. “That got us some progress,” Fransen said, “but there hasn’t been a lot beyond that.” Countries in the Paris Agreement are required to update their NDCs by 2025.
“If the pace of improvement from 2016 to today continues, the world will not only miss the Paris Agreement goals, but it will miss them by a long shot,” the report said.
The focus of this year’s global climate talks, which will be held next month in Egypt, will be on reducing emissions of methane. Greenhouse gas Methanol is a gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide for its first 20 years in the atmosphere after being released into the atmosphere. A recent study from the World Resources Institute shows that, among the 119 countries that signed a Global Methane Pledge last year, only 15 of those countries included in their National Development Plans (NDPs) a specific, quantified Methane Reduction Target. This shows the work that needs to be done.
Fransen said that reducing emissions can have a positive effect on economics and health in the long run. This includes improving energy efficiency and reducing air pollution. This could lead to increased momentum for cleaner emissions cuts in the future. There is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem when it comes to seeing those benefits, but seeing those benefits can only help to bolster ambitions, according to Melissa.
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Source: Reuters
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