Waiting to ramp up climate action until after 2020 will make the transition to a global low-carbon future harder for the poor and vulnerable while placing a large burden of future generations, a coalition of civil society groups said in a report Friday. The report reviews national commitments for the years leading up to 2020 in the Paris Agreement on climate change, which sets a target of limiting global temperature rise to between 1.5 and 2-degrees Celsius. “In aggregate, across the world, only 30-44% of the mitigation needed in 2020 to shift us rapidly toward a 1.5°C pathway has been pledged,” the report finds.
The civil society groups said the United States and some other large developed nations must promote deeper cuts than feasible domestically to do their “fair share” to limit global temperature rise. “These countries can only meet their fair shares by providing money for additional emissions cuts in developing countries. Only with massive international cooperation – that makes it possible for developing countries to go way beyond their fair shares – can the global climate crisis be solved,” according to the report.
The report comes as representatives from nearly 200 nations meet in Marrakesh, Morocco, for the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to determine how to best implement the Paris Agreement. “COP22 in Marrakesh has been framed as the ‘Action COP,’ where the Paris pledges are converted to national and global actions. This means all countries working in partnership to deliver a credible path to a 1.5°C world,” the report says.
