New Delhi: The majority of developed countries are still a long way off their plans to limit global warming to the UN-agreed 1.5 degrees Celsius despite raising ambition in the past 18 months, according to an updated version of the peer-reviewed Paris Equity Check. The Paris-Equity-Check.org assesses Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) or national plans of countries to help achieve the global goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius as compared to the pre-industrial average.
Countries hope that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The Earth's global surface temperature has already increased by around 1.1 degrees Celsius as compared to the pre-industrial (18501900) average and this warming is considered the reason behind record droughts, wildfires and floods worldwide.
In particular, the US, Canada, Australia, the EU, Germany and Spain are working off plans that are in line with a range of 2.1-3.4 degrees Celsius warming, according to the assessment. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Vietnam and Iran are among the countries who still have climate plans associated with 5 degrees Celsius global warming.
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The COP27 Sharm El-Sheikh Implementation Plan released in November underscored the need to meet the 1.5-degree Celsius limit and deliver loss and damage finance, a key prerequisite to accelerate collaboration for more ambitious emission cuts globally. The majority of the world's poorest countries are on course to meet the 1.5-degree Celsius limit. But without adequate levels of financial support, they may pursue carbon-intensive development pathways through the 2020s and 2030s and overshoot their fair levels of emissions after their "currently fair" 2030 targets.
Paris Equity Check (PEC) rates the fairness and ambition of targets based on three principles presented in the UN's IPCC-AR5 WGIII report - the capability of a country to deliver faster Greenhouse Gas (GHG) cuts, historical responsibility per capita emissions and the equality of access to the remaining carbon space. "Fairness is the metric for assessing the ambition of national climate targets and their contribution to the global effort needed to limit global warming.
"Countries can implement 'fair and ambitious' targets, as required under the Paris Agreement, through a combination of domestic mitigation and support to reduce emissions at a lower cost in other poorer countries that can mitigate beyond their fair targets," said Yann Robiou du Pont, lead researcher at PEC. (PTI)
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