UN: climate pledges make 'significant dent' in global warming
4:00PM GMT 30 Oct 2015
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Worldwide pledges to cut carbon emissions will make a "significant dent" in forecast global warming levels, but will not be enough to avert dangerous climate change, the UN has said.
Ahead of next month's UN climate change summit in Paris, 146 countries have so far made pledges covering action they will take to cut their carbon emissions from 2020.
If implemented, the pledges will significantly reduce the level of global warming that would have been expected in a "business as usual" scenario - when average temperatures could easily have reached 4C or 5C above pre-industrial levels.
But they are still likely to see temperatures rise by 2.7C by the end of the century, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said - so are "by no means enough" to prevent temperatures exceeding the 2C level beyond which scientists say the world will see the most severe effects of climate change.
"We’re already seeing significant climate effects from 0.85 degrees of warming."
Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid
Ms Figueres said: "Fully implemented, these plans together begin to make a significant dent in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions: as a floor they provide a foundation upon which ever higher ambition can be built."
Some developing countries, which are likely to feel the worst effects of climate change, have demanded that industrialised countries take much tougher action to curb emissions sooner.
But experts have said for some time that the pledges made at the Paris summit are unlikely by themselves to put the world on a "pathway" to warming of 2C or less.
Ms Figueres has repeatedly threatened to "chop the head off" anyone who suggests the Paris summit has failed in its aims if it does not put the world on a trajectory to less than 2C.
Instead, UN chiefs are hoping to agree a clear mechanism by which countries will agree to a long-term goal and a clear and binding mechanism to review and increase countries' pledges in years to come.
Christiana Figueres, the UN's climate chief Photo: Xinhua News Agency/REX
Ms Figueres said she was confident the pledges made so far were "not the final word in what countries are ready to do and achieve over time" and the Paris agreement would "confirm, and catalyze that transition".
Dr Stephen Cornelius, WWF-UK’s chief adviser on climate change, said: "It is clear that, when added up, the 146 countries' climate pledges reviewed in the report are not enough.
"While there has been a lot of progress over the last year, it is still insufficient to keep the global temperature rise to well below 2C that the scientific evidence demands.
"A big challenge for the Paris climate talks is how to increase the ambition of countries so that their collective actions will put us on the right path to tackle climate change.
"The message we have to send to leaders and negotiators in Paris must be: we must do more, and we must do it faster. The more that we do now, the easier and cheaper it will be."
Mohamed Adow of Christian Aid said: "The Paris outcome alone won’t prevent climate change, it will just get us closer to the agreed goal of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
"If fully implemented these pledges will get us to 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100 but we need a mechanism that will drive future action to get that number down to 2 degrees and preferably lower. We’re already seeing significant climate effects from 0.85 degrees of warming."
