Sharing the Burden of Adaptation Financing: An Assessment of the Contributions of Countries

Climate change may cause most harm to countries that contribute least to greenhouse gas emissions. This paper identifies deontology, solidarity and consequentialism as the principles that can serve as a basis for a fair international burden sharing scheme of adaptation costs. We translate these principles into criteria that can be applied in assigning contributions of individual countries, namely historical responsibility, equality and capacity to pay. Specific political and scientific choices are discussed, highlighting implications for international burden-sharing. Combining historical responsibility and capacity to pay seems a promising starting point for international negotiations on the design of burden-sharing schemes. From the numerical assessment, it is clear that UNFCCC Annex I countries carry the greatest burden under most scenarios, but contributions differ substantially subject to the choice of an indicator for capacity to pay. The total financial contribution by the Annex I countries could be in the range of $55-68 billion annually.Adaptation Financing, Burden-Sharing, Historical Responsibility

The role of the land use, land use change and forestry sector in achieving Annex I reduction pledges

Annex I Parties may receive credits or debits from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) activities, contributing to achieving individual emission reduction targets. In the Durban climate negotiations, Parties agreed new LULUCF accounting rules for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (CP2). By using these new rules, this paper presents key differences among Parties at the minimum (assuming no additional action) and potential (assuming additional actions) contribution of the forest-related LULUCF activities in achieving the pledges for 2020. Overall, the potential contribution of LULUCF is relatively modest (up to about 2% of 1990 emissions) for the EU, the Annex I Parties likely joining the CP2, and for the Annex I Parties that joined the CP1 as a whole. However, for specific Parties, LULUCF can make a substantial contribution to achieving the pledges. For New Zealand, for instance, the potential contribution of future LULUCF credits may equal 33% of its 1990 emission level. For Australia, the pledges are expressed relative to 2000 emission levels including LULUCF emissions. Given that LULUCF emissions have strongly declined between 1990 and 2000, and a further decline in foreseen by 2020 (based on Australia’s projections), the minimum contribution of LULUCF to meet the Australian pledges appears to be about 19% and 7% relative to its 1990 and 2000 emission level, respectively. A further 3% potential contribution is estimated from additional actions.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

Comparing ambition of EU companies with science-based targets to EU regulation-imposed reductions

Companies can support countries in closing the emissions gap between current policies and the Paris goals by implementing pledged voluntary greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets that are more stringent than the national climate policy regulation requires. For this purpose, we assessed the potential impact of EU companies with 2030 emission reduction targets approved as 2/1.5 °C-consistent by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in the sectors that are regulated by the Emissions Trading System (ETS) and Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR). To verify potential additionality, company targets were compared to a current policies scenario based on ETS and ESR trends set under the then applicable 40% by 2030 reduction target, and two scenarios that include the voluntary SBTi targets excluding or including flanking measures to materialise additional reductions in ETS. Depending on the assumption of these flanking measures, EU companies with SBTi-approved targets are projected to result in a 4% or 14% reduction by 2030 relative to the EU current policies scenario. Our results illustrate that SBTi-approved companies are not significantly more ambitious than the rest of the emitters in the EU without flanking measures. However, it does show that companies regulated by ETS show higher estimated reductions by 2030 compared to those only regulated by ESR. This analysis shows that more policy detail is important in assessing the additionality of voluntary targets, resulting in zero additional emissions for ETS if a conservative estimate is required

Multi-gas Emissions Pathways to Meet Climate Targets

So far, climate change mitigation pathways focus mostly on CO2 and a limited number of climate targets. Comprehensive studies of emission implications have been hindered by the absence of a flexible method to generate multi-gas emissions pathways, user-definable in shape and the climate target. The presented method ‘Equal Quantile Walk' (EQW) is intended to fill this gap, building upon and complementing existing multi-gas emission scenarios. The EQW method generates new mitigation pathways by ‘walking along equal quantile paths' of the emission distributions derived from existing multi-gas IPCC baseline and stabilization scenarios. Considered emissions include those of CO2 and all other major radiative forcing agents (greenhouse gases, ozone precursors and sulphur aerosols). Sample EQW pathways are derived for stabilization at 350 ppm to 750 ppm CO2 concentrations and compared to WRE profiles. Furthermore, the ability of the method to analyze emission implications in a probabilistic multi-gas framework is demonstrated. The probability of overshooting a 2 ∘C climate target is derived by using different sets of EQW radiative forcing peaking pathways. If the probability shall not be increased above 30%, it seems necessary to peak CO2 equivalence concentrations around 475 ppm and return to lower levels after peaking (below 400 ppm). EQW emissions pathways can be applied in studies relating to Article 2 of the UNFCCC, for the analysis of climate impacts, adaptation and emission control implications associated with certain climate targets. See http://www.simcap.org for EQW-software and dat

The role of the land use, land use change and forestry sector in achieving Annex I reduction pledges

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The key role of forests in meeting climate targets requires science for credible mitigation

Forests contribute to climate change mitigation by conserving and enhancing the carbon sink and through reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. Yet the inclusion of forests in international climate agreements has been complex, often considered a secondary mitigation option or treated separately, like Cinderella excluded from the ball. In the lead up to the Paris Climate Agreement, countries submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), including climate mitigation targets. Assuming full implementation of INDCs, we show that land use, and forests in particular, emerge as a key component of the Paris Agreement: turning globally from a net anthropogenic source during 1990-2010 (1.3 ± 1.1 GtCO2e/y) to a net sink of carbon by 2030 (up to -1.1 ± 0.5 GtCO2e/y), and providing a quarter of emission reductions planned by countries. Realizing and tracking this mitigation potential requires more confidence in numbers, including reconciling estimates between country reports and scientific studies. This represents a challenge and an opportunity for the scientific community.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

Targeted Green Recovery Measures in a Post-COVID-19 World Enable the Energy Transition

Despite the significant volume of fiscal recovery measures announced by countries to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, most recovery plans allocate a low percentage to green recovery. We present scenarios exploring the medium- and long-term impact of the COVID-19 crisis and develop a Green Recovery scenario using three well-established global models to analyze the impact of a low-carbon focused stimulus. The results show that a Green Recovery scenario, with 1% of global GDP in fiscal support directed to mitigation measures for 3 years, could reduce global CO 2 emissions by 10.5–15.5% below pre-COVID-19 projections by 2030, closing 8–11.5% of the emissions gap with cost-optimal 2°C pathways. The share of renewables in global electricity generation is projected to reach 45% in 2030, the uptake of electric vehicles would be accelerated, and energy efficiency in the buildings and industry sector would improve. However, such a temporary investment should be reinforced with sustained climate policies after 2023 to put the world on a 2°C pathway by mid-century