Brussels, 29/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - Two months ahead of the COP21 (30 November - 11 December), 100 countries representing more than 75% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) have now submitted to the United Nations their offer to contribute (INDC) to the global climate deal expected to be reached in Paris.
This was announced in New York on Tuesday 29 September by Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), amidst calls for the pace to be stepped up. The official deadline is 1 October, to leave the UN enough time to write a summary report on INDCs.
One hundred countries is around half of the 195 parties to the UNFCCC, but not enough to claim to be able to meet the 2 degrees Celsius target. European Climate Action and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete welcomed the fact, however, that a round figure had been reached on Tuesday evening at the opening of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate he was attending in NewYork. “The EU has a solid negotiating position. Now we need to step up the pace of the negotiating process,” he said, tweeting that a. new negotiating document will be unveiled next week.
The day before, the French president who will be chairing COP 21, François Hollande, stressed the need for urgent action if a credible agreement is to be reached in Paris. He said that if one asked him today for a prediction, he would say that nothing has been won for an agreement in Paris, nothing at all, but at the same time, everything is still possible. He was addressing the UN General Assembly, where he spoke of very useful talks in New York. India has not yet made any commitments, but is expected to submit an offer on 1 October. Brazil announced on Sunday that it is planning to reduce its emissions by 37% by 2025 and 43% by 2030, compared with the 2005 level - an offer that the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, said was more ambitious than the EU's INDC (a cut of at least 40% by 2030 on the 1990 level). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)