Almost three quarters of the climate pledges countries have put forward for the Paris agreement fall short of the emissions cuts needed to stop dangerous warming.
Bob Watson, a former scientific adviser to the UK government, and colleagues found countries with insufficient plans include the world’s biggest emitters, China, India and the US. The US on Monday started the formal process of withdrawing from the Paris deal. The team found only plans by seven countries, including Norway, Switzerland and Ukraine, and the EU were compatible with the goal of holding temperature rises to no more than 1.5°C.
“It’s depressing,” says Watson. “What the message is here is if governments are serious about meeting the Paris targets, whether it’s 1.5°C or 2°C, they need to ratchet up their commitments.”
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French president Emmanuel Macron said today that countries next year will need to enhance their plans to curb emissions, ahead of a crunch UN climate summit to be held in Glasgow. “The cooperation between China and the European Union in this respect is decisive,” he said at a trade fair in Shanghai.
Watson and his team put forward by countries under the Paris climate agreement, which was signed in 2016. Some countries, such as Russia, have not even submitted a plan. Of ones that have, only those that would deliver a 40 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 were classified as sufficient.
Watson says the ranking is limited by the fact it does not factor in what would be a country’s fair or equitable portion of global emission cuts, a country’s historical contribution to climate change, or poorer countries’ need to develop.
In the case of the US, under former president Barack Obama’s climate initiatives, the country’s plan would have been deemed partially sufficient, but since rollbacks by Donald Trump, it is graded as insufficient. The US is off-track for its goal of cutting emissions by a quarter by 2025, but the US secretary of state Mike Pompeo the country had been a leader in cutting emissions. “Ours is a realistic and pragmatic model,” he said of the US withdrawal from the Paris accord.
If all the existing pledges are delivered, the world is on course to warm by 3-3.5°C, a level that would trigger extreme heatwaves and flooding, says Watson. “But given all the pledges will probably not be met, we are on a pathway of 3.5°C-4°C,” he adds. żěè¶ĚĘÓƵs at the European Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed today that globally October had been the hottest on record.
This year’s UN climate talks , after the Chilean government cancelled its hosting of the summit due to social unrest.
