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United Nations Conference about Climatic Change COP20 in Lima, Peru
‘An agreement in Paris next year will not solve climate change. But it can begin the process of repair. Unusually, the path to Paris starts in Peru.’ Photograph: Paolo Aguilar/EPA
‘An agreement in Paris next year will not solve climate change. But it can begin the process of repair. Unusually, the path to Paris starts in Peru.’ Photograph: Paolo Aguilar/EPA

Emissions targets are biggest challenge for Lima climate talks

This article is more than 9 years old
Michael Jacobs

Avoiding dangerous climate change depends on the strength of emissions reduction targets countries collectively adopt. And this remains a major concern

As this year’s UN climate change conference opens in Lima, Peru, a series of unexpected political developments in recent months has created a mood of surprising optimism. But dark clouds remain.

First came the UN Climate Summit in September, and the huge public mobilisation which accompanied it. With nearly 400,000 people marching on the streets of New York, and hundreds of thousands more in cities around the world, the assembled leaders were warned that climate change was no longer an issue they could ignore.

A month later the European Union agreed new targets to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, by at least 40% by 2030.

This was followed by a remarkable joint US-China statement made by Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping in Beijing. For the first time, the world’s two largest emitters committed to work together to achieve a new international climate agreement, and announced new targets for each country.

The US-China deal has made diplomats sit up. In the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere, multilateral diplomacy has taken a battering recently. Yet now the legally binding climate change agreement, which many commentators had regarded as impossible, looks as if it could finally be secured at the UN conference in Paris in December next year.

Important progress is being made in key areas of the negotiations. Last month countries pledged almost $10bn to the new Green Climate Fund, to help poorer nations reduce their emissions and adapt to the warming already under way. The goal to mobilise $100bn per year in public and private finance by 2020 still needs a clearer plan, but this is an important part.

At the same time a new proposal offers a way of overcoming the climate regime’s longstanding division of the world into two fixed camps, of developing and developed countries. Brazil has proposed a third category for emerging economies (like itself and China), allowing countries to choose which category they belong to, and to graduate from one to another as they grow richer.

And there is movement too around the concept of a legal agreement. Negotiators are exploring ways in which the core “rules” of the climate regime – the kind of targets and plans countries must make, their obligations to count emissions consistently and report them transparently – could be binding in international law, while the targets themselves might be binding, rather, in domestic law. That could make it easier for some countries, including the US and China, to ratify the deal.

Yet here lies the rub. For in the end climate change will not be tackled by rules. It will be determined by the strength of the emissions reduction targets countries collectively adopt. And this remains a major concern.

The commitments made in the last two months by the EU, US and China are substantial, and politically bold. But they follow years of inadequate effort to cut emissions. And this means they are almost certainly not enough to hold average global temperatures below the 2C rise since pre-industrial times which the international community has set as its goal.

Averting dangerous climate change will depend, of course, not just on the level of global emissions in 2025 or 2030, but what action is taken over the rest of the century. But analysis shows that, even if other countries make comparable reduction pledges, global emissions in 2025 and 2030 are likely to exceed a plausible trajectory towards 2C. Since countries are due to put forward their pledges – in UN jargon, ‘Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions” (INDCs) – in early 2015, there is a clear risk that the Paris conference will be labelled a failure even before it starts.

How can this be avoided? Four measures agreed in Lima can help ensure that Paris promotes greater ambition.

First, INDCs should be defined as the minimum which countries will do, not their final word. After all, no country will really be deciding its entire policy framework for 2025 or 2030 next year. In reality, falling renewable energy prices and other technological changes are likely to make emissions reductions cheaper in the future. Making the INDCs floors to ambition, not ceilings, would allow countries to add to their commitments over time.

Second, the agreement should require targets to be strengthened every five years on a regular cycle. Targets for 2025 and 2030 should be accompanied by long-term decarbonisation plans.

Third, the agreement should include a long-term goal to phase out net greenhouse gas emissions altogether. This goal, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has shown is required by the second half of the century if 2C of warming is not to be exceeded, would make the ultimate aim of the Paris agreement absolutely clear.

Fourth, countries must commit to exploring every avenue in 2015 to raise ambition levels. National plans should be scrutinised, and further international co-operation agreed. In a whole variety of sectors, from deforestation to action in cities, powerful opportunities to cut emissions while pursuing jobs and growth are now emerging. Serious efforts should be made to direct both public and private finance towards these areas.

An agreement in Paris next year will not solve climate change. But it can begin the process of repair. Unusually, the path to Paris starts in Peru.

Michael Jacobs is visiting professor in the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and senior adviser to the New Climate Economy.

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