Mitigation Commitments Under the Paris Agreement and the Way Forward

Mace, Marie

doi:10.1163/18786561-00601002

Cited by 47 publications

(29 citation statements)

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“…Our categorization shows clear differences in how developed and developing countries treat LULUCF: Although substantial progress has been made in breaking down the division between developed and developing countries (Mace, 2016), institutional and practical inertia play a role in maintaining some separation. Our categorization shows clear differences in how developed and developing countries treat LULUCF: Although substantial progress has been made in breaking down the division between developed and developing countries (Mace, 2016), institutional and practical inertia play a role in maintaining some separation.…”

Section: 1029/2019ef001190mentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The variety and ambiguity in LULUCF accounting approaches may be due in part to the legacy of previous LULUCF accounting approaches. Our categorization shows clear differences in how developed and developing countries treat LULUCF: Although substantial progress has been made in breaking down the division between developed and developing countries (Mace, 2016), institutional and practical inertia play a role in maintaining some separation. Countries with KP targets are more likely to refer to the KP and/or use specific LULUCF accounting in their NDCs (see Table S14), while developing countries are more likely to anticipate a contribution from REDD+ (see section S10 and Table S13) or do not specify any LULUCF accounting rules.…”

Section: 1029/2019ef001190mentioning

confidence: 94%

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Ambiguity in the Land Use Component of Mitigation Contributions Toward the Paris Agreement Goals

Fyson

Jeffery

2019

Earth's Future

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Land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) activities, including deforestation and forest restoration, will play an important role in addressing climate change. Countries have stated their contributions to reducing emissions and enhancing sinks in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs); in 2023, the Global Stocktake will assess the collective impact of these NDCs. Clarity in the contribution of LULUCF to NDC targets is necessary to prevent high LULUCF uncertainties from undermining the strength and clarity of mitigation in other sectors. We assess and categorize all 167 NDCs and find wide variation in how they incorporate LULUCF; many lack the clear information necessary to understand what land-based mitigation is anticipated. The land sector is included in 121 NDCs, but only 11 provide a LULUCF target that can be fully quantified using information presented or referenced in the NDC. By developing alternative scenarios from a subset of 62 NDCs (89 countries), we estimate that ambiguity in LULUCF contributions causes an uncertainty range in the anticipated LULUCF sink in 2030 of magnitude 2.9 GtCO2eq/year-larger in size than our best estimate for the LULUCF sink of −2 GtCO2eq/year. Clearer communication of data sources and assumptions underlying the contribution of land use to mitigation efforts is therefore important for ensuring a robust Global Stocktake and ambitious emissions reductions. We find that guidance under the Paris Agreement may improve the clarity of future NDCs but is not sufficient to eliminate ambiguities. We therefore recommend that LULUCF targets should be presented and accounted for separately from other sectors.Plain Language Summary Land-based activities, including reducing deforestation and planting forests, play an important role in addressing climate change. Under the Paris Agreement, 195 countries agreed to produce national climate change action plans for reducing their emissions. Many of these plans already include land-based activities, but there is currently no common rule set for how to do so in a scientifically robust way. Our study shows that most national climate action plans are ambiguous in how land-based activities will contribute to reducing emissions. This makes it difficult to track the role of land-based activities in global efforts to address climate change and leaves the door open for countries to use uncertain land-based mitigation to offset emissions from burning fossil fuels. We estimate that this ambiguity causes an uncertainty of~3 GtCO2/year in 2030; this is larger than our estimate of the total human-made land use sink in 2030 (-2 GtCO2/year). Recently, countries agreed a set of guidance for how to describe their climate change action plans. This guidance will help to reduce some ambiguity in the role of land-based mitigation, but it is not sufficient to eliminate ambiguity. We recommend that countries should keep their land-based mitigation plans separate from targets in other sectors.

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Section: 1029/2019ef001190mentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: 1029/2019ef001190mentioning

confidence: 94%

Ambiguity in the Land Use Component of Mitigation Contributions Toward the Paris Agreement Goals

Fyson

Jeffery

2019

Earth's Future

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“…The LTTG is ambiguous with regard to its interpretation. Following Mace (2016), the LTTG might be interpreted as either establishing an absolute 1.5°C limit, or a long-term limit that can be temporarily exceed. In any case, warming should always be held 'well below 2°C'.…”

Section: Interpreting the Paris Agreement Goalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inconsistencies when applying novel metrics for emissions accounting to the Paris agreement

Schleußner

Nauels

Schaeffer

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Addressing emissions of non-CO 2 greenhouse gases (GHGs) is an integral part of efficient climate change mitigation and therefore an essential part of climate policy. Metrics are used to aggregate and compare emissions of short-and long-lived GHGs and need to account for the difference in both magnitude and persistence of their climatic effects. Different metrics describe different approaches and perspectives, and hence yield different numerical estimates for aggregated GHG emissions. When interpreting GHG emission reduction targets, being mindful of the underlying metrical choices thus proves to be essential. Here we present the impact a recently proposed GHG metric related to the concept of CO 2 forcing-equivalent emissions (called GWP * ) would have on the internal consistency and environmental integrity of the Paris Agreement. We show that interpreting the Paris Agreement goals in a metric like GWP * that is significantly different from the standard metric used in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report can lead to profound inconsistencies in the mitigation architecture of the Agreement. It could even undermine the integrity of the Agreement's mitigation target altogether by failing to deliver net-zero CO 2 emissions and therewith failing to ensure warming is halted. Our results indicate that great care needs to be taken when applying new concepts that appear scientifically favourable to a pre-existing climate policy context.

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“…Informed by literature on effort-sharing approaches, the international community has long discussed the operationalization of equity following the UNFCCC principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) to drive national emissions allocations 2 , 3 . The failure to agree on a top–down mechanism to derive binding national emissions targets for all countries led to a bottom-up situation where countries should pledge NDCs of highest possible ambition 4 , 5 . While the quest for a common understanding of what is a fair effort-sharing continues, rapidly falling technology costs of renewables and increasing mitigation co-benefits shift the attention away from effort-sharing considerations 6 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather, it reflects national preferences for relative gain 32 —i.e., a country’s inclination to measure the fairness of its contribution to the global mitigation effort by looking at other countries’ efforts—rather than for domestic indicators alone. Despite claims that discussions of justice are irrelevant or dangerous in a post-Paris world, equity is fundamental for climate policy research 33 , 34 and scientific analyses on equitable burden-sharing can be influential on the UNFCCC processes 5 . However, the absence of agreement on an unanimous operationalization of the CBDR-RC should not be used as an excuse for inaction 3 and should not leave the international community without a metric reflective of current agreements to assess the ratcheting-up process.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warming assessment of the bottom-up Paris Agreement emissions pledges

Pont

Meinshausen

2018

Nat Commun

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Under the bottom-up architecture of the Paris Agreement, countries pledge Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Current NDCs individually align, at best, with divergent concepts of equity and are collectively inconsistent with the Paris Agreement. We show that the global 2030-emissions of NDCs match the sum of each country adopting the least-stringent of five effort-sharing allocations of a well-below 2 °C-scenario. Extending such a self-interested bottom-up aggregation of equity might lead to a median 2100-warming of 2.3 °C. Tightening the warming goal of each country’s effort-sharing approach to aspirational levels of 1.1 °C and 1.3 °C could achieve the 1.5 °C and well-below 2 °C-thresholds, respectively. This new hybrid allocation reconciles the bottom-up nature of the Paris Agreement with its top-down warming thresholds and provides a temperature metric to assess NDCs. When taken as benchmark by other countries, the NDCs of India, the EU, the USA and China lead to 2.6 °C, 3.2 °C, 4 °C and over 5.1 °C warmings, respectively.

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Mitigation Commitments Under the Paris Agreement and the Way Forward

Cited by 47 publications

References 0 publications

Ambiguity in the Land Use Component of Mitigation Contributions Toward the Paris Agreement Goals

Ambiguity in the Land Use Component of Mitigation Contributions Toward the Paris Agreement Goals

Inconsistencies when applying novel metrics for emissions accounting to the Paris agreement

Warming assessment of the bottom-up Paris Agreement emissions pledges

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