Boost emissions cutting goals, draft text urges
GLASGOW: A draft UN climate summit text urged countries on Wednesday to boost their emissions cutting goals by 2022, three years ahead of schedule, after data showed the world was far off track to limit warming to 1.5 degree Celsius.
Wednesday’s text was the first indication of where nations are 10 days into the COP26 talks in Glasgow, which host Britain has billed as crucial to achieving the most ambitious temperature goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The text called for nations to “revisit and strengthen” their decarbonisation plans by next year and said that limiting heating to 1.5°C “requires meaningful and effective action by all parties in this critical decade”.
It said “rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions” were needed to avert the worst impacts of heating, which has already seen countries worldwide slammed by fiercer floods, droughts and storms.
Countries’ latest decarbonisation plans submitted under the Paris Agreement are likely to see Earth warm 2.7°C this century, according to a UN assessment of the pledges.
The 2015 accord contains a “ratchet” mechanism requiring countries to update emissions plans every five years. Several large emitters missed the 2020 deadline for submitting new plans, known as nationally determined contributions.
Vulnerable nations say that the next deadline, in 2025, is too distant to deliver the short-term emissions cuts needed to avoid disastrous heating.
In what observers said was a “significant first mention” of the fuels driving global warming, the draft summit called on countries to “accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels”.