October 19, 2015
The US has committed to only a fifth of its fair share and the EU just over a fifth in the fight against climate changethrough its new targets, a collective assessment by some of the top global NGOs working on climate change across the North-South divide has concluded.
The report also concludes that almost all developing countries including India and China have taken on more than their fair share of the burden through their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).
A first of its kind, brought out by the civil society groups that also at times are divided across the hemispheres just like the countries, the report assesses whether countries have taken a fair burden to keep global temperature rise below two degree Celsius by the end of the century in relation to their historical responsibilities for causing the problem and their current capacities. A summary of the report was released on Monday.
The burden the report refers to are the targets countries have formally submitted to the UN to be undertaken under the global Paris climate change agreement. These targets, on reducing emissions, providing finance and technology are meant to be achieved between 2020-2030.
The US it calculated, compared to a fair share of reduction by 12,943 Million tonnes of Carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e) only intended to reduce its emissions by 2,089 MtCO2e by 2030 and EU had pledged to reduce its emissions by 1,587 MtCO2e instead of a fair burden of 7,036 MtCO2e. The authors took 1850 as a base to calculate the historical emissions from and to measure the reductions in absolute terms against the base year.
China, the authors assessed should have reduced 3,371 MTCO2e of emissions but has offered to reduce 4,888 by 2030 while India could have fairly taken a burden of reducing emissions by 54 MTCO2e but has committed to reducing it by 280 MTCO2e.
The report said, “Most developed countries have fair shares that are already too large to fulfil exclusively within their borders, even with extremely ambitious domestic actions. In addition to very deep domestic reductions, the remainder of their fair shares must therefore be accomplished by enabling an equivalent amount of emissions reduction in developing countries through financing and other support.”
Noting that the developed countries foot prints were too large to take action only domestically, the report added, “This (their fair share of burden that developed countries have not undertaken accounts for almost half of the reductions that need to take place globally, which indicates the need for a vast expansion of international finance, technology and capacity-building support (Means of Implementation).”
The assumptions implicit in the calculations, which make material difference to the assessment, would be released as part of the full report in the coming week, the authors said.
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