COP24 summit: ‘Developed nations likely to fall way short of 2020 emission targets’

COP24 summit: ‘Developed nations likely to fall way short of 2020 emission targets’

News:

Assessment by the UN climate body shows that the developed nations are likely to fall short of their modest emission reduction targets for 2020.

Facts:

• It is a first-of-its-kind assessment by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), shows that developed nations had reduced their emissions by 16 per cent from their 1990 levels by the year 2016 short of their collective target of 18 per cent.
• These targets for the developed countries for the pre-2020 period are governed by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and will expire in 2020, after which the Paris Agreement will take over.
• In the Kyoto framework, only the developed countries, responsible for the overwhelming majority of emissions over the last 150 years, were assigned specific emission reduction targets.
• However, In the Paris architecture, no country is assigned any target and everyone decided their own the climate actions

India’s Argument

• India and other developing countries have been arguing that the emission gap created by the developed nations in pre-2020 period will eventually fall upon everyone to fulfill, and want to guard against this scenario.
• At a recent meeting in New Delhi, the four countries which go under the name of BASIC group (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) had stressed that these emission gaps must not present any “additional burden to developing countries in the post-2020 world”, and therefore, proposed that the developed countries must be made to carry over their unachieved targets beyond 2020 and finish them by 2023.

Additional facts:

• Kyoto Protocol
  • Was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005
  • Agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate and it is internationally binding emission reduction targets.
  • The Protocol places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of “Common but differentiated” responsibilities.
  • The detailed rules for the `implementation of the Protocol were adopted at COP 7 in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2001, and are referred to as the “Marrakesh Accords
  • During the first commitment period, 37 industrialized countries and the European Community committed to reduce GHG emissions to an average of five percent against 1990 levels. Developing nations were asked to voluntarily comply.
  • During the second commitment period, Parties committed to reduce GHG emissions by at least 18 percent below 1990 levels in the eight-year period from 2013 to 2020.
• The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – Is an intergovernmental treaty developed to address the problem of climate change. The Convention, was negotiated and opened for signature at the June 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) — also known as the Rio Earth Summit.