5 September 2016, The Conversation, US-China ratification of Paris Agreement ramps up the pressure on Australia. When President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping announced their countries’ ratification of the Paris climate agreement ahead of last weekend’s G20 meeting in Hangzhou, they boosted its chances of coming into force by the end of this year, some 12 months after the deal was brokered last December. To enter into force, the Paris Agreement requires ratification by at least 55 nations which together account for at least 55% of global greenhouse emissions. It will then become legally binding on those parties that have both signed and ratified it. These thresholds ensure that the deal has broad legitimacy among states, but are also low enough to limit the opportunities for blocking by states that may oppose its progress. Aside from China and the United States – the world’s two largest emitters, which together produce 39% of the world’s emissions – another 24 countries have ratified the agreement. To get over the threshold, it now only needs the support of a handful of major emitters like the European Union (a bloc of 27 countries producing some 10% of global emissions), India, Russia or Brazil. Ratification by countries such as Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom (each of which contributes about 1.5% of emissions) would also contribute significantly to this momentum. Read more here
Tag Archives: UNFCCC
24 August 2016,Climate Home, Adaptation takes centre stage as IPCC prepares 1.5C study. Tackling climate change is no longer simply about cutting greenhouse gas emissions: flood defences, heat resilient crops and weather warning systems are set to take centre stage. That’s the message from scientists fresh from an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Geneva last week. The UN science body has started work on a new and potentially devastating report on ways to avoid warming the earth to more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – and the consequences of failure. Due in September 2018, it will set the political tenor for global talks on climate change through to 2020, by which time the new Paris Agreement on climate change is slated to become operational. Critically, it will underpin a UN-led review the same year into how countries are delivering on the Paris deal, and perhaps offer the basis for those national goals to be increased. …… The trouble is it’s effectively too late for that, said Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC’s last major study and a colleague of Mach’s at the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University. Read More here
18 August 2016, Reuters, Scientists to probe ways of meeting tough global warming goal. Scientists on Thursday set the outlines of a report on how to restrict global warming to a limit agreed last year by world leaders – even though the temperature threshold is at risk of being breached already. The U.N.-led study, due to be published in 2018 as a guide for governments, will look into ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to cap the rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. It will examine impacts of a 1.5C rise on vulnerable parts of the world including Greenland’s ice sheet and coral reefs. Thelma Krug, a Brazilian scientist who led the four-day meeting in Geneva, said it will also cast the fight against climate change as part of a wider struggle to end poverty and ensure sustainable growth. “Rapid changes are needed for (no rise above) 1.5C,” she told Reuters.World leaders agreed to work towards that target at a meeting in Paris in December, also requesting the report as part of a global agreement to phase out greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, in the second half the century. The global rise reached 1.3C in the first half of 2016, which is almost certain to be the warmest year since records began in the 19th century, beating 2015. Some studies indicate emissions could breach levels consistent with 1.5C within about five years. Many show temperatures overshooting that limit and then being reduced later by extracting greenhouse gases from the atmosphere with yet-to-be developed technology. “It will be difficult, but there are also opportunities,” said Sabine Fuss, a delegate at the Geneva meeting from the Mercator Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. Costly action now could help avert even more expensive damage from floods, heat waves, extinctions and rising ocean levels, she said. Read More here
11 August 2016, NationTalk, IPCC meetings in Geneva, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is holding two meetings this month in Geneva to advance work on its forthcoming reports. From 15 to 18 August 2016, around 85 experts joined by members of the IPCC Bureau will take part in the scoping meeting for the Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-Industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty (SR1.5). The IPCC was invited to prepare this Special Report by the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris in December 2015. The Conference reached an agreement to limit the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 ºC above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 ºC. The report will be delivered in 2018, in time for a “facilitative dialogue” that will take place that year to take stock of progress under the Paris Agreement. The Special Report is being developed under the joint scientific leadership of all three IPCC Working Groups. Read More here