Brussels, 21/08/2015 (Agence Europe) - A hundred days before the UN climate conference in Paris (COP 21, 30 November-11 December), 56 countries have sent the UN their intended nationally determined contribution (INDC), in other words ten more countries than at the end of July (see EUROPE 11369).
This is good progress, but it is still too little, said European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete in Brussels on Thursday 20 August. He urged the emerging countries to show their cards as quickly as possible - as major actors such as China, the US and EU have already done, “but also some of the most vulnerable countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific”, he said.
Speaking to press to update them on the international climate negotiations, Canete said that to avoid the international community failing to meet the objective of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (compared with pre-industrial levels), three conditions needed to be met - both in the Bonn negotiations and those in Paris. “First, technical negotiations must go faster; second, more countries must come forward with ambitious contributions; and third, and perhaps most importantly, we need to define the key elements for success in Paris”, he said.
The US announcement on 3 August of new rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly from new, renovated and existing coal-fired power plants (a 32% reduction by 2030 compared with 2005) is, in Canete's view, a positive step which “provides further impetus ahead of the Paris summit”. Canete says that to reach the objective of keeping the average temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels, all countries must take their share.
“The good news is that, after a slow start, more and more countries are submitting their contributions: so far, 56 countries, representing 61% of current global emissions (…) And this is progress if you compare it to the current system - the second commitment of the Kyoto Protocol - where only 35 countries representing 14% of global emissions have targets”, Canete said. He urged “key G20 countries such as Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey” to submit their INDC.
Canete announced that the Commission and Morocco (which will take over the next COP presidency) will organise an international climate forum in Rabat on 12-13 October to “exchange views on the aggregate efforts of the contributions before Paris and discuss what we can do to stay on track to the 2 degrees objective over time”.
Convinced that the Paris conference must “send a credible signal to the world that governments are serious about fighting climate change”, Canete believes that it is up to countries like the US and China, which do not want individual binding objectives per country, to “demonstrate a convincing alternative that gives the necessary long-term signal that citizens, markets and decision makers need”. By long-term objective, he means a reduction in global emissions of greenhouse gases of at least 60% by 2050 compared with 2010, in order to reach an objective of nearly zero emissions by 2100. (Aminata Niang)