Montreal Protocol, 1987. Although the Montreal Protocol [PDF] was not designed to combat climate change, it was a historic environmental agreement that has become a model for future diplomacy on the issue. All countries in the world eventually ratified the treaty, which required them to stop producing substances that damage the ozone layer, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The Protocol has succeeded in eliminating almost 99 per cent of these ozone-depleting substances. In 2016, the parties agreed on the Kigali Amendment to also reduce their production of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), powerful greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. IPCC SR1.5 also assesses other pathways leading to higher levels of warming, including pathways that keep warming below 2°C with a 66% probability and do not return to 1.5°C. IPCC SR1.5 provides an assessment of these signalling pathways for comparison and consistency with mitigation pathways compatible at 1.5°C. The IPCC`s SR1.5 is also very clear about the increase in climate risks between 1.5°C and 2°C, which refers to the clause in the Paris Agreement LTTG, which recognises that warming remains well below 2°C and limits it to 1.5°C to significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, legal instruments may be adopted to achieve the objectives of the Convention. For the period 2008 to 2012, measures to reduce greenhouse gases were agreed in the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.
The scope of the Protocol was extended until 2020 with the Doha amendment of the Protocol in 2012. [61] The IPCC notes that climate change is limited only by “significant and sustainable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” While one can debate the benefits of using a single global temperature threshold to represent dangerous climate change, the general scientific opinion is that any increase in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees Celsius would pose an unacceptable risk – potentially leading to mass extinctions, more severe droughts and hurricanes, and an aqueous Arctic. As the IPCC notes, while it remains uncertain about the extent of global warming that will trigger “abrupt and irreversible changes” in Earth`s systems, the risk of crossing the threshold only increases as temperatures rise. There is a lot of misinformation about the Paris Agreement, including the idea that it will hurt the U.S. economy. It was a series of unsubstantiated claims that Trump repeated in his 2017 speech at Rose Garden, claiming that the deal would cost the U.S. economy $3 trillion by 2040 and $2.7 million in jobs by 2025, making us less competitive with China and India. But as fact-checkers noted, these statistics come from a debunked March 2017 study that exaggerated the future costs of emission reductions, underestimated advances in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, and completely ignored the huge health and economic costs of climate change itself. Among other requirements, countries must report on their greenhouse gas inventories and progress towards their targets so that external experts can assess their success. Countries should also reconsider their commitments by 2020 and present new targets every five years to further reduce their emissions.
They must participate in a “global stocktaking” to measure collective efforts to achieve the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. In the meantime, developed countries must also estimate the amount of financial assistance they will provide to developing countries to help them reduce their emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change. Ultimately, all parties have acknowledged the need to “avoid, minimize and treat loss and damage,” but in particular, any mention of indemnification or liability is excluded. [11] The Convention also adopts the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, an institution that will seek to answer questions on the classification, treatment and co-responsibility of losses. [56] While these are not the long-term continuous temperatures covered by the agreement, average temperatures in the first half of 2016 were about 1.3°C (2.3°F) above the 1880 average when global records began. [26] Recognizing that many developing countries and small island states that have contributed the least to climate change could suffer the most from its consequences, the Paris Agreement includes a plan for developed countries – and others that are “able to do so” – to continue to provide financial resources to help developing countries mitigate climate change and increase their resilience to climate change. The agreement builds on financial commitments from the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, which aimed to increase public and private climate finance for developing countries to $100 billion a year by 2020. (To put this in perspective, global military spending in 2017 alone amounted to about $1.7 trillion, more than a third of which came from the United States.) The Copenhagen Pact also created the Green Climate Fund to support the mobilisation of transformation finance with targeted public funds. The Paris Agreement established hope that the world would set a higher annual target by 2025 to build on the $100 billion target for 2020 and put in place mechanisms to achieve that scale. The choice of the pre-industrial reference period, as well as the method of calculating the global average temperature, may change scientists` estimates of historical warming by a few tenths of a degree Celsius.
Such differences become important in the context of a global temperature limit that is only half a degree above the current level. But assuming consistent definitions are used, they have no bearing on our understanding of how human activities affect climate. Outside of formal intergovernmental negotiations, countries, cities and regions, businesses and members of civil society around the world are taking action to accelerate cooperative climate action in support of the Paris Agreement as part of the Global Climate Change Agenda. Paragraphs 6.4 to 6.7 establish a mechanism “to contribute to the control of greenhouse gases and support sustainable development”. [40] Although there is still no specific name for the mechanism, many Parties and observers have informally united around the name “Sustainable Development Mechanism” or “SW Award”. [41] [42] The MSD is considered the successor to the Clean Development Mechanism, a flexible mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol through which Parties could jointly request emission reductions for their intended nationally determined contributions. The SDG provides the framework for the future of the Clean Development Mechanism after Kyoto (in 2020). [needs to be updated] The Paris Agreement was opened for signature on 22 April 2016 (Earth Day) at a ceremony in New York. [59] After several European Union states ratified the agreement in October 2016, enough countries had ratified the agreement and were producing enough greenhouse gases worldwide to allow the agreement to enter into force. [60] The agreement entered into force on November 4, 2016.
[2] One of the key architectural concepts of the Cancun 2°C target, integrated into the long-term temperature target of the Paris Agreement, is to “keep warming” below a certain level. The term “maintain” is significantly stronger than a return to a certain level of warming around a certain point in time (up to 2100 (from an implicitly higher level). In the negotiations on this warming target, formulations such as a return to 2°C by 2100 were proposed and rejected. When studying a range of emission pathways that are compatible with a long-term temperature target, the requirement to remain below a certain level of warming requires a greater and faster reduction in emissions than a temperature target that requires a return to a certain degree of warming by 2100, for example. This has concrete implications for policy – and emission trajectories – and, therefore, the Climate Action Tracker has taken care to use pathways that are fully in line with the targets. While increasing NDC ambitions is a key objective of the global inventory, it assesses efforts that go beyond containment. The 5-year reviews will also focus on adaptation, climate finance regulation, and technology development and transfer. [29] The initial commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol has been extended until 2012. .
