Climate change talks to discuss Paris agreement

WITH hurricanes, floods and other impacts of climate change becoming increasingly destructive, countries urgently need to step up their ambitions to cut emissions if they are to keep global warming within safe limits, experts said ahead of UN climate talks which starts today.

Some 163 countries have submitted plans on how they will contribute to meeting the Paris climate agreement goal to limit global warming to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels.

But put together, the plans are likely to lead to a 3ºC temperature rise this century, according to the UN. Nicholas Nuttall, spokesperson for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the national plans delivered in advance of Paris, “were well known at the time to fall short of the Paris Agreement’s longterm goals”.

But the agreement also calls for countries to take stock of international progress on climate action and ratchet up their national plans accordingly.

The first stock taking is set for next year, with the first plans due in 2020.

“That will, if followed, eventually get the world on track to the goals and the aim of climate neutrality in the second half of the century,” Nuttall said.

“The UN climate conference in Bonn… needs to be a launch pad to that next ambition moment,” he said.

This year has seen particularly severe weather of the type climate scientists have long warned about: severe floods in Asia, devastating hurricanes in the Caribbean and US, and wildfires in California and southern Europe.

In the effort to stave off worsening impacts, “we’re in a race against time,” Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, said last week. “We have to make it stick that it’s good business to protect the environment but also that it’s good policy.”

As 195 nations meet starting today in Bonn for UN climate talks, they will be working to create rules to implement the Paris agreement, including on sometimes contentious issues such as how reductions of climate-changing gases should be reported and checked by other nations.

But time is short, with global emissions of climate changing gases needing to peak by 2020 – just three years away – in order to keep warming to relatively safe levels, according to the World Resources Institute.

Camilla Born, a senior policy adviser for E3G, a London-based climate think tank, said: “We are going to have to show increased ambition by 2020 if we’re going to really get on track to delivering those longterm goals.”

“This isn’t just a conversation about raising targets. This is about structuring our economies differently. We need to move there much faster,” she said. – Thomson Reuters Foundation

THE UN CLIMATE CONFERENCE IN BONN… NEEDS TO BE A LAUNCH PAD TO THAT NEXT AMBITION MOMENT