It’s time for national governments to focus on the short-term domestic actions needed to meet their 1.5°C goals, argue Anna PĂ©rez CatalĂ , Henri Waisman, Marta Torres Gunfaus and Ariadna Anisimov at IDDRI. Analyses of emissions gaps at a collective and global level won’t be enough, the current purpose of the Global Stocktake (GST) of the Paris Agreement. The first GST runs from 2021 to 2023 and the process will be repeated every 5 years. The … [Read more...]
COP26 and the Glasgow Pact: a summary of achievements, and shortfalls
Experts from around the world summarise their reaction to the outcomes of this year’s UN climate summit, COP26, including the Glasgow Climate Pact agreed by all 197 countries attending the talks. Each expert covers their area of interest: overall targets, greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel finance, nature conservation, transportation, cities and buildings, energy sector transitions, science and innovation, and gender equality. The overall … [Read more...]
Will COP26 set right the booming Carbon Offset Market
Carbon offsetting is when a company, rather than cut its own emissions, pays someone else somewhere else to cut their emissions. It has always been controversial because it has two main problems. Buying carbon credits means you aren’t putting the effort in to cut emissions yourself. And the risk of double-counting: when the company reports it has cut emissions, and so does the “someone else”. A third problem exists too: measuring whether the … [Read more...]
UK’s COP26 Presidency will be the first big test of its post-Brexit diplomatic skills
November’s COP26 will arguably be the most important since the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. By then, all signatory nations are required to submit their new and improved nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that set a credible pathway towards reducing their emissions. So far only the Marshall Islands, Suriname, and Norway have done so. Lucien Chabason and Lola Vallejo at IDDRI ask whether the UK teams behind their new COP26 President, … [Read more...]
COP25: the “easy wins” are coming to an end. What now?
Lola Vallejo at IDDRI says the impressive wins we’ve seen so far in clean electrification are merely the easy “low hanging fruit”. Other big sectors like transport, buildings and industry have barely started to transition. As COP 25 convenes in Madrid this week, the world will want to know what promises will be made - via each country’s self-imposed enhanced Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) - to meet the Paris goals, because the current … [Read more...]
NDC reporting: making the Paris Agreement Transparency Framework work
For the system of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to be effective, every country’s reporting processes need to be appropriate to their economic level, honest and accurate. That means the Paris Agreement’s Transparency Framework, including the Common Reporting Tables (CRT) for greenhouse gas inventories, and Common Tabular Formats (CTF) to track progress on their NDCs, needs to be finalised and agreed upon, and fast, says the IDDRI’s … [Read more...]
