MARRAKESH, Morocco — Just one year after the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change, six of the Group of 20 nations have fallen short of their commitments, according to a report released here at the United Nations climate change summit by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Center for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Heading into the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the first international climate deal to apply to both developed and developing nations, parties were asked to submit intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), publicly committing to certain efforts to counter climate change. Once a party formally joins the agreement, which entered into force on Nov. 4, those INDCs turn into NDCs, dropping the “intended” and becoming the real thing.
According to the report, “Argentina, Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States have not been undertaking sufficient domestic efforts to match their pledged nationally determined contributions.”
The U.S. pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. However, a major portion of that reduction was expected to come from the Clean Power Plan, carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants. The Supreme Court put the rule on hold in February while a lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan proceeds through the federal judicial system. A decision on the legality of the regulation is currently pending at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The story for the U.S. may get worse before it gets better in terms of climate action. Republican Donald Trump, elected president on Nov. 4, has pledged to deregulate the energy sector, eliminating the Clean Power Plan and other rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Trump’s election doesn’t necessarily doom U.S. climate action, but the prognosis is less than ideal, the report says. “For the US, bottom-up action by cities or States could help to ratchet up ambition at the federal level. A few proactive States should champion more ambitious US climate policy. At the same time, a committed executive branch could make further use of provisions under the Clean Air Act to advance climate policy at the federal level. However, this seems unlikely to happen under the recently elected Donald Trump,” the report says.
According to the report, an additional six nations — Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, together with the European Union — “were found to have undertaken action that is ‘either completely or mostly consistent with the key requirements of the Paris Agreement.’”
