A crucial week in the fight against global warming

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meets this week in France to mark the 30th anniversary of its creation. This body, under the auspices of the UN, is preparing what is likely to be the single biggest agenda-setting, climate science report of the year.

It is a survey due to be finalized in September, which an early draft has indicated shows “there is a very high risk that, under current emissions trajectories and current national pledges, global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.” This 1.5 degree Celsius mark, which was the target set by Paris, was made to avoid the worst impacts of so-called “runaway” climate change.

This is not the first time this assertion has been made; for instance, a group of senior climatologists warned in September 2016 that the global average temperature could rise to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels as soon as 2050. But the IPCC enjoys special credibility in this debate, hence the importance of its findings.

The pending report also comes in the context of US President Donald Trump’s continuing skepticism about climate change, and his decision last year to start the process of reversing US ratification. Any nation wishing to withdraw must wait four years — the length of a US presidential term — although the Trump team is seeking ways to circumnavigate that and leave much sooner.

Disturbingly, Trump is also continuing to fill the upper ranks of his administration with officials who are fellow climate skeptics. This is despite the fact that the US government’s own National Climate Assessment found in November that humans have pushed global temperatures to their highest level in modern times, and NASA too warned in January that “increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions in the atmosphere” are behind temperature rises.

In these circumstances, pessimism may grow in coming months about the future of global efforts to combat climate change. Yet while the scale of the challenge remains huge, the Paris deal does allow for countries to ratchet up their emissions cuts in future.

This underlines that while the deal — reached by more than 190 countries as the successor treaty to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol — is a welcome shot in the arm for attempts to tackle global warming, even more ambition is likely to be needed in the future. Indeed, rather than viewing the agreement as the end of the process, it must be seen as the beginning of a longer journey that governments and legislators must now make in 2018 and beyond, with or without Trump.

The roadmap for moving forward is already clear from this week’s IPCC summit onwards. First, implementation of the Paris deal will be most effective through national laws were politically feasible. The country commitments put forward in 2015 will be most credible — and durable beyond the next set of national elections — if they are backed up by national legislation where this is possible.

And this must ideally be supported by well informed, cross-party politicians from across the political spectrum who can put in place a credible set of policies and measures to ensure effective implementation, and hold governments to account so Paris delivers. To enable this to happen, bodies such as the Council of Europe advocate dissemination of best practice across legislatures from Asia-Pacific to the Americas, the building of capacity and promotion of common, effective approaches across countries.

While the pledges made in Paris may not be enough yet, the treaty has crucially put in place the domestic legal frameworks that are crucial building blocks to measure, report, verify and manage greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, countries are required under the agreement to openly and clearly report on emissions and their progress in reaching the goals in their national climate plans submitted to the UN. States must also update these every five years, highlighting the measures being pursued to implement the goals.

In the future, the ambition must be that these frameworks are replicated in even more countries, and progressively ratcheted up. And there are clear signs of this happening already in numerous states, from Asia-Pacific to the Americas, as countries seek to toughen their response to global warming.

What this movement toward a more robust stance on climate change shows is the scale of the transformation in attitudes already taking place among many governments and wider societies across the globe. As will be shown yet again this week in France, many countries now view tackling global warming as in the national self-interest and see, for instance, that expanding domestic sources of renewable energy not only reduces emissions, but also increases energy security by reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels.

Reducing energy demand through greater efficiency reduces costs and increases competitiveness. Improving resilience to the impacts of global warming also makes economic sense. And domestic laws also give clear signals about direction of policy, reducing uncertainty, particularly for the private sector.

All of this underlines why legislators must be at the center of international negotiations and policy processes not just on climate change, but also on the full range of UN sustainability issues, including the 2030 development goals. With or without Trump, governments and legislatures can now co-create, and implement, what could be a foundation for global sustainable development in coming decades for billions across the world, starting with implementation of the Paris deal from 2018 onwards.

Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics