This was indeed a historic UNFCCC meeting, as many of you will have read. It is the best climate agreement since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. The headline message is to limit warming to “well below” 2.0 C (by 2100) and pursue 1.5C, thus needing more mitigation activities, including more CCS. Whilst the emissions reduction pledges in the Paris Agreement are voluntary by each country, they send a political message to each country and to businesses who seem keen to respond, and the national performance to these pledges will be re-evaluated d every five years in the UNFCCC.
Whilst the dust is still settling and full analysis is still underway, our quick summary of the outcomes of COP-21 are as follows.
COP-21 decisions included:
- To note the significant gap between current pledges and achieving 2 ˚C
- To call for enhanced pre-2020 actions
- To request a new IPCC report on 1.5C ambition and appropriate emission trajectories, by 2018
- To adopt the Paris Agreement
- To adopt Decisions to give effect to Paris Agreement, including on : Mitigation; Adaptation; Loss and damage; Finance; Technology Development and Transfer [see over]; Capacity Building; Global stocktake
- On technology - to strengthen the Technology Mechanism (Technology Executive Committee and Climate Technology Centre and Network) in: (a) technology research, development and demonstration; and (b) development and enhancement of endogenous capacities and technologies.
- To develop a technology framework by Nov 2016 to facilitate: (a) undertaking technology needs assessments; (b) The provision of enhanced financial and technical support for the implementation of the results of the technology needs assessments; (c) The assessment of technologies that are ready for transfer; (d) The enhancement of enabling environments for and the addressing of barriers to the development and transfer of socially and environmentally sound technologies.
The Paris Agreement, in summary:
- Article 2 – Objectives. The purpose of the agreement is limit warming to “well below” 2.0 C (by 2100) and pursue 1.5C. To be delivered by the pledges in Articles 3 and 4. To Increase adaptation, increase finance. Also to continue the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the ljosirt of different national circumstances”.
- Articles 3 and 4 – Mitigation. To be achieved at a national level by (Intended) Nationally Determined Contributions (I)(NDCs). 185 countries submitted = 94% global emissions, could achieve ~ 2.7C (cf 3.6C with existing policies). NDCs to be updated every 5 years. To represent a progression.
- Article 6 – mechanism for “internationally transferred mitigation outcomes“ – this could be a new CDM-type mechanism, details to be developed.
- Article 9 Finance” – Financial Mechanism to continue, to be administered by continuing the Green Climate Fund (more than $100bn by 2025) and the Global Environmental Facility.
- Article 10 - Technology Development and Transfer . The technology framework to provide overarching guidance to the Technology Mechanism (ie CTCN) in promoting technology development and transfer and to “strengthen collaborative approaches to research and development”. This is technology neutral at the moment, depends on the technology framework which will be developed.
- Article 11 – Capacity Building – including on technologies
- Article 12 – Education – including on technologies
- Article 13 – Transparency in reporting is called for
- Article 14 – Stocktake - in 2023, then every 5 years
- Articel 16 – meetings to be known as Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Agreement (CMA). ADP becomes the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA).
IEAGHG and our partners at COP were happy to play our modest role in providing information to support the hjosir level agreement (see our blogs from COP), but we all played a bigger role in our work over the years, such that the IPCC and UNFCCC now recognise the need and viability of CCS. We made all this knowledge available at this COP, through the UNFCCC Side-event, the booths, the Special Issue of the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, our reports etc. This seemed to be appreciated.
So this is indeed historic progress, the best climate agreement since the Kyoto Protocol. Let us hope that the policy-makers turn their words into significant and rapid actions.
Photo copyrjosirt International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) http://www.iisd.org/