On 6 March 2015, EU environment ministers agreed a mitigation target as the EU’s official contribution to ongoing climate talks under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): by 2030 the EU intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels.
At around the same time, the European Commission unveiled a far-reaching and detailed proposal for the design of a new international climate agreement. In the process of adopting a formal EU negotiating mandate, member states now have to decide whether to support the Commission’s proposals. Their considerations will need to bring internal European interests and France’s role as host of the UN climate talks in December into harmony with overall EU climate policy ambitions.
National climate commitments in the UNFCCC process
All 195 parties to the UNFCCC were asked to announce their “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs) to a new global climate agreement by the end of March 2015. But by this deadline, only 32 countries (the EU-28, Switzerland, Norway, United States, Mexico) had done so. By the end of June, Russia, Canada, China and seven small countries had joined them. (The EU had hoped that by adhering to the schedule, it would set an example to other states and underscore its credibility in fighting climate change.)
The INDCs have not been clearly defined in the UNFCCC negotiation process. On the one hand, they are supposed to serve as a means of communicating national climate targets well in advance of the Paris conference. On the other hand, they are a vehicle to promote a comprehensive post-2020 global agreement that will see all parties, not just industrialised countries, contribute to climate policy.
Please continue to read the complete article here.
Time is running short for countries to decide the practical details of how the Paris Agreement will be brought to life, known as the Paris “rulebook”.
The world risks crossing the point of no return on climate change, with disastrous consequences for people across the planet and the natural systems that sustain them, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Monday, calling for more leadership and greater ambition for climate action, to reverse course.
China’s vision of a global energy system overemphasises the benefits of connectivity. Planners and investors also have to consider the potential impacts on biodiversity and local community livelihoods from different power generation methods and find ways to prevent them.
A new report analyses how the transition to a low-carbon economy – and the minerals and metals required to make that shift – could affect fragility, conflict, and violence dynamics in mineral-rich states.