Sun, Dec 11, 2011
Significant Emissions Gap However Remains
With Doubts on How it Will be Decisively
Bridged by 2020
Kyoto Protocol to Continue-But Covers Only
a Fraction of the Necessary Global Emissions
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Durban, 11 December 2011 Several key and
important steps forward were agreed at the
UN climate convention meeting that closed
today in Durban, including an agreement
to negotiate a new and more inclusive treaty
and the establishment of a Green Climate
Fund.
UNEP and Climate ChangeBut
the outcome in the South African coastal
city has left the world with some serious
and urgent challenges if a global temperature
rise is to be kept under 2° Celsius
in the 21st century.
The 'Bridging the Emissions
Gap' report, coordinated by the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP) with climate modeling centres
across the globe, underlined in the run-up
to Durban that the best available science
indicates that greenhouse gas emissions
need to peak before 2020.
It also underlined that
annual global emissions need to be around
44 Gt of C02 equivalent by around that date
in order to have a running chance of achieving
a trajectory that halves those emissions
by 2050 below 2005 levels.
The report also concluded
that bridging the divide is economically
and technologically do-able if nations raise
their emission reduction ambitions and adopt
more stringent low-carbon policies across
countries and sectors.
The key question of
the Durban outcome is whether what has been
decided will match the science and lead
to a peaking of global emissions before
2020 to maintain the world on a path to
keep a temperature increase below 2°
Celsius.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General
and UNEP Executive Director, said: "The
outcomes of Durban provide a welcome boost
for global climate action. They reflect
the growing, and in some quarters unexpected,
determination of countries to act collectively.
This provides a clear signal and predictability
to economic planners, businesses and investors
about the future of low-carbon economies.
A number of specific commitments agreed
in Durban also indicate that previous decisions
on financing, technology and Reduced Emissions
from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
(REDD+) are moving to implementation."
"The big question
many will ask is how this will translate
into actual emission reductions and by when?
Whatever answer will emerge in the coming
months, Durban has kept the door open for
the world to respond to climate change based
on science and common sense rather than
political expediency," he added.
By some estimates the
cost of cutting emissions will cost four
times more beyond 2020 than they would cost
today with the price rising over time.
By some estimates the
current emissions trajectories, unless urgently
reversed, could lead to a global temperature
rise of 3.5° Celsius or more sometime
by the end of the century.
"The Government
of South Africa and the Executive Secretary
of the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change should be congratulated for what
has been achieved, given the low expectations
in the months and weeks before Durban,"
added Mr. Steiner.
Today the European Union
and several other countries agreed to continue
the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 if other
governments, including major emitters from
developed and developing ones, agreed to
negotiate a new legally binding treaty with
deeper emission reductions by 2015 to come
into force afterwards.
The continuation of
the Kyoto Protocol during this new negotiation
phase means the provisions of this existing
emission reduction treaty, ranging from
emissions trading to the Clean Development
Mechanism, will also continue providing
some benefit to the climate and the ambitions
of developing economies over the near term.
Green Climate Fund,
Adaptation and Technology
Durban also made progress
on the decision at last year's UN climate
convention meeting in Cancun, Mexico, to
establish a Green Climate Fund.
The operationalization
of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is a key
step forward as is reconfirmation of the
commitment of mobilizing US&dollar100
billion to support developing countries
by 2020.
Readiness actions in
developing countries will be a vital part
of helping prepare for the investments that
will eventually flow from the GCF. Other
steps forward included operationalizing
Cancun agreements on adaptation and technology.
In Durban governments
agreed to establish an Adaptation Committee
and a process that will lead to the establishment
of a Climate Technology Centre and Network
with likely funding from the Global Environment
Facility.
"The movements
forward on the Cancun agreements in respect
to adaptation and climate technology institutions
are welcome, as is the operationalization
of the Green Climate Fund. But the core
question of whether more than 190 nations
can cooperate in order to peak and bring
down emissions to the necessary level by
2020 remains open-it is a high risk strategy
for the planet and its people," said
Mr. Steiner.
"Nationally many
governments are acting as are companies,
cities and individual citizens. In 2010,
over US&dollar210 billion was invested
in renewable energy, for example. But this
bottom-up approach needs a top to which
it can aim-and a time line for building
that top is narrowing ever year," he
added.
