INDC: What do countries contribute to combat climate change?
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Eight months to go before the 195 member states of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to meet at the COP21. The event will take place from November 30 to December 11 in France and will allow countries to reach a global agreement to reduce Greenhouse Gases (GHG) and prevent the planet's temperature from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius.
To achieve the agreement, which will change the history of the planet, it is necessary for each government to present its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC). This will show the world's efforts to prevent global warming from continuing to increase. Although the fight against climate change is a global effort, each country has a different reality and therefore the presentation of their contributions are adapted to unique circumstances such as socioeconomic level, national priorities, as well as adaptation and mitigation factors.
The commitments that will come into effect in 2020 will also demonstrate the level of ambition of each society and so far only 37 countries have made their INDCs public. To learn more about each nation's commitment and establish a comparative analysis, ConexiónCOP has analyzed the base year of reduction proposals, the importance of forests in some countries and the use of the carbon market to understand how these three factors influence the INDCs.
- Year of departure
Why did the United States present its INDC using 2005 as the base year and Mexico only made a forward projection of its emissions? Beatriz Zavariz, a climate change specialist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), explains that it is very difficult for countries to agree on what base year they will use to construct their INDCs, given that there are many aspects that are taken into account in doing so.
"Developed countries select a fixed year, developing countries such as Mexico, Korea and Chile select a Business As Usual projection; and China and India, countries with significant economic potential but at the same time very large populations, select to condition CO₂ on their GDP or CO₂ per capita reductions, arguing that their population compared to that of other small countries such as Norway, emits very little and that they have the right to continue to develop given their large populations."explains Beatriz Zavariz.
- Presence of forests.
Russia's INDC submission relies on reducing its GHGs subject to the maximum absorption capacity of its forests and on reducing emissions from the energy, industrial, agriculture, land use and waste sectors.
The fact that Russia focuses a large part of its reduction on forestry activities does not necessarily mean that it has a lower ambition. It should be taken into account that forestry activities are more durable in the long term, and deforestation requires major efforts such as governance development, institutional arrangements, social development, capacity building, among others.
Alessandro de Pinto, Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Food Policy ResearchThe report argues that each country finds the least costly way to achieve the reduction target.
"Generally speaking, when a country has a significant amount of forest, which is threatened by deforestation, preventing deforestation is a fairly modest way to reduce emissions compared to the same base."he says.
Beatriz Zavariz points out that deforestation and forest degradation have very important and sustainable impacts in the long term, and can also become sources of carbon absorption.
"I consider that the only risk of an INDC with a forestry approach is that the results are evident in the long term, with no impact in the short or medium term."adds the specialist.
Contrary to Russia, Gabon stressed that its commitment does not include forests, despite the fact that 88% of its territory is forest.
- Carbon market.
Switzerland was the first country to formally present its INDC, in which it indicated that part of its emissions reductions will be at home (30%) and the rest in investments in external emission reduction projects (20%). These investments referred to are part of what is known as the "Carbon Market".
In contrast, most of the other countries did not include the carbon market in their commitments.
The portal Sustainability explains that carbon markets arise with the intention of obtaining the necessary emission reductions (targets) at the lowest cost: whoever can carry out the reduction actions at a not very high cost, carries them out. Whoever costs more buys them, and in this way helps to finance the projects of the former: this is how the efficiency of the system is achieved.
In the case of Switzerland, which commits 20% of its reductions through a carbon market, this means that the country intends to buy the carbon it will reduce at home from other developing nations. In this way Switzerland will continue to work in the traditional way, without stopping its industry or its economy, but at the same time reducing emissions in another area.
Alessandro de Pinto argues that carbon markets create incentives for emitters to reduce their GHGs by greater amounts.
"The overall result is that an emissions reduction target is achieved at a lower and successful cost."he says.
Beatriz Zavariz points out that countries will establish carbon reduction contributions to achieve their goals, bilateral or multilateral agreements will be created, where some countries will buy emission reductions from others, or developed countries will provide financial resources for developing countries to achieve their goals.
Source: COP connection
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