UN research shows G20 nations lagging in climate action

UN research shows G20 nations lagging in climate action

UN research shows G20 nations lagging in climate action

Young people protest outside of the San Francisco Federal Building during a Climate Strike march in San Francisco, US on September 20, 2019. (REUTERS Photo)

 

Nairobi, September 22 (IANS): G20 nations are collectively not on track to meet their Paris Agreement commitments, but they have huge opportunities to undertake rapid and deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, a new UN research has said.


An advance chapter of the 2019 Emissions Gap Report, released on Saturday ahead of the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit slated to open on Monday, has said that the G20 members, which account for around 80 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, were not yet taking on transformative climate commitments at the necessary breadth and scale.


The report showed that around half of the G20 nations’ GHG emissions trajectories fall short of achieving their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) under the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement.


Taken as a whole, the current NDCs are nowhere near enough to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius or below two degrees temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.


This means that the world is still on the path to a catastrophic temperature rise of well over three degrees this century.


However, the advance chapter points to key areas where G20 nations can rapidly step up action when they submit their next round of NDCs in 2020.


“We can only avoid planet-altering climate change with the full commitment of G20 nations to a zero-carbon future. So far, they haven’t done enough” said UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen.


“But the good news is that every G20 nation has an array of nationally appropriate actions available to them to slash their emissions. Combined with strong political and societal support for climate action, there has never been a better opportunity for policymakers to take these actions.”


The full Emissions Gap Report, due for release in late November, will contain a detailed G20 update.


The 2018 report said the G20 would need to cut an extra 2.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year by 2030 to meet their unconditional NDCs.


For conditional NDCs, the number is 3.5 gigatonnes.


According to the report, nations must at least triple the level of ambition of their current NDCs to have a chance of keeping global temperature rise under 2 degrees Celsius.


To keep global temperatures to 1.5 degrees, they must increase their ambitions five-fold.

 

Greta Thunberg seek UN action 


Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, and three other young environment crusaders have sought UN action against climate change and asked for a world without toxic emissions.


As part of the Youth Climate Summit at the UN headquarters here, Thunberg, Argentina’s Bruno Rodriguez, Kenya’s Wanjuhi Njoroge, and Komal Karishma Kumar of the Fiji Islands, on Saturday asked that the world’s leaders to give an account of what they plan to do about this scourge and warned they will continue protesting in the streets until something is done, reports Efe news.


The four activists accompanied UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the beginning of this meeting that precedes the Climate Action Summit on Monday, to which the top UN official has asked the world’s leaders to come with concrete, realistic plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent over the next 10 years and 100 percent by 2050.


In a brief speech, Thunberg, who next will address the world’s presidents and heads of state on Monday, said that the September 21 protests requesting action against climate change “showed that we are united, and that we young people are unstoppable”.


On September 21, more than 4 million people, mostly youths, poured into the streets around the world to protest the climate emergency, according to protest organizers, who said that in New York they numbered more than 250,000.
Thunberg said that since she will speak at the Climate Action Summit, to be attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi among others, she would prefer on this occasion to give up her time to her companions.


Rodriguez, 18, said “enough is enough. We don’t want fossil fuels anymore”, and that the world must “stop the criminal contaminant behaviour of big corporations”, because 100 companies are responsible for 71 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.


Njoroge, like Kumar, insisted that the countries that have contributed least to the climate crisis are the ones suffering from it the most, though the latter noted that this wasn’t the time to blame but to collaborate.


For her part, Kumar took aim at contaminating corporations saying “we demand action. Stop wasting time” and stop standing in the way to grab “short term profits”.


After the speeches by the four activists, Guterres expressed his support for the young activists and encouraged them to keep fighting. “I encourage you to keep your initiative. Keep your mobilization and more and more to hold my generation accountable,” he said.


“My generation has largely failed until now to preserve both justice in the world and to preserve the planet,” he said.