The United Nations (UN) climate chief Christiana Figueres on Monday called for rapid action on climate change, saying that new estimates of record global carbon emissions were a stark warning to governments.
Ms Figueres, who is executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was referring to the release of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) estimates for greenhouse gas emissions from energy generation for 2010, which showed record levels following a small decrease in 2009.
“This is the inconvenient truth of where human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are projected to go without much stronger international action now … and into the future,” she said in a statement.
The IEA report, published as the annual World Energy Outlook, states that carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.6 gigatonnes (Gt) from 2009 levels to 30.6 Gt. The Paris-based agency estimates that the world needs to limit annual emissions to less than 32 Gt by 2020 to avoid the worst climate change impacts - a target that is impossible at the current rate of growth.
“The world has edged incredibly close to the level of emissions that should not be reached until 2020 if the 2ºC target is to be attained,” said IEA chief economist Dr Fatih Birol.
“Given the shrinking room for manoeuvre in 2020, unless bold and decisive decisions are made very soon, it will be extremely challenging to succeed in achieving this global goal agreed [at the UN climate change conference] in Cancun,” he added.
Governments at the UN’s recent climate talks in Mexico’s Cancun agreed to a major effort to reduce the world’s carbon emissions and also committed to aiding developing nations adapt to climate change through a Green Climate Fund. They did not agree on an internationally recognised plan for reducing emissions, a plan needed in light of the Kyoto Protocol’s pending expiration in 2012.
The Kyoto Protocol, ratified in 1997 by 193 countries, is the only international treaty that legally binds developed countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The climate change decision process is restarting next week when government negotiators meet in Germany to prepare for the 17th Conference of the Parties, or COP17, the next round of major international talks taking place in Durban, South Africa, at the end of this year.
Ms Figueres stressed that negotiators must make progress: “We’re only a few days away now from the mid-year climate negotiations and governments need to pick up speed.”
“It is clear that they need to push the world further down the right track to avoid dangerous climate change,” she added.
Ms Figueres said governments will have two main challenges that they have agreed to resolve in Durban. They will have to determine the future of the Kyoto Protocol, and they will have to agree on the structure of programmes, including the Green Climate Fund, technology sharing initiatives and an Adapation Committee, to help developing countries cope with climate change.
Along with her urgent warning, Ms Figueres offered encouragement, saying she sees countries moving forward with new policies that promote low-carbon growth, even if they do not always attach climate labels to these policies. She noted that the private sector continues to increase its investment in low-carbon business and renewable energy and is ready to do more.
“In Durban at the end of the year, governments need to take the new steps that will drive both these trends forward and much faster,” she said. “The meeting in Bonn is a major opportunity to prepare these essential steps,” she added.
