NEW YORK, Sep 8 (IPS) – G20 member states are individually and collectively falling far behind in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and failing to make the significant emissions reductions needed to keep global temperatures low , despite the technological and financial possibilities to reduce emissions.
And now that the hottest summer on record has ended, says United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, “climate change has begun.”
The G20 countries, which have both the largest economies and the highest amounts of greenhouse gases, have committed to reducing emissions by 2030 to limit global warming. A new article from Oxfam shows that their goals are not ambitious enough.
“G20 countries – both collectively and almost all individually – are failing to achieve their share of the ambitious global mitigation needed to limit global warming to 1.5?,” Oxfam reports, noting that 63 percent of the world’s population lives in the G20. countries that produce 78 percent of greenhouse gases. The amount of carbon dioxide each person in these countries emits each year must be halved by 2030 to stay on track. However, current plans are not on track to achieve the global goal.
According to Oxfam, the richer G20 countries are performing the worst of all.
Oxfam notes that high-income countries have focused on increasing the climate efforts of low- and middle-income countries, without addressing their own inability to do their part. For example, to contribute proportionately to reducing global emissions, the United States would need to increase its current reduction target by another 240 percent. Oxfam identified these shortcomings using three different metrics that assess the fairness and ambition of countries’ current reduction targets.
“The richest G7 and G20 countries must step up their own domestic climate ambition and radically increase climate financing to make up for historic emissions. This is not just a matter of fairness – without it we will never achieve the life-saving goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam’s climate change policy lead.
The G20 members, which include high-income countries such as the United States, Australia and Germany, are responsible for 78 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. High income earners emit the equivalent of 7.4 to 7.7 tons of CO2 average per person. The Oxfam report indicates that their emissions should be reduced by half – 2.9 to 3.8 tonnes – by 2030. It reflects the failure of their domestic commitments in their countries and their international commitments. Overall, high-income countries were found to be among the largest emitters of greenhouse gases per year.
A lack of financing has prevented many countries from achieving their climate goals. According to Oxfam, middle-income countries such as South Africa, China and Mexico have both lower historical responsibility for climate change and less financial capacity to tackle its effects.
Middle-income G20 countries such as India, Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa currently emit nearly 6.1 to 6.3 tonnes of CO2 per person per year. They should reduce this to 4 to 5.8 tons of CO2 per person. The report notes that while these countries have also failed to meet their global mitigation ambitions, in some cases they do not have the financing capacity to address these challenges.
Therefore, these “developing countries” could rightly seek the climate finance contributions needed to meet these pledges. This is where high-income G20 members would also be able to meet global mitigation needs by increasing their contributions to international climate finance, thereby supporting the mitigation efforts of middle to lower income countries. By the standards of fair distribution of mitigation efforts, this would also allow them all to meet global mitigation levels.
The Oxfam report has been published at a critical time, as world leaders prepare to meet at summits where climate action will undoubtedly be on the agenda, as they reassess their progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. The leaders of the G20 countries will meet in India on September 9 and 10 for the G20 summit.
Ahead of the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in November, the G20 and other countries are expected to present their upcoming climate action pledges for the Paris Agreement’s 2023 Global Stocktake. This will serve as a turning point to determine whether they are on track to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.
There is also the upcoming Climate Ambition Summit on September 20, which the UN Secretary General will convene amid the 78e session of the UN General Assembly. It is expected that world governments, but especially major emitters, will present updated climate action plans and NDCs.
Ashfaq Khalfan, Oxfam America’s Director of Climate Justice, explains that countries in the Global South need massive long-term investments to quickly replace fossil energy with renewable energy. According to Khalfan, the current UN budget of $100 billion per year to finance all climate change projects is “a gross underestimate.” Adequate funding would be between $1 and $2 trillion.
The UN predicts that if more ambitious action is not taken, emissions will rise by 10 percent by 2030 instead of the 45 percent reduction needed to reach the Paris Agreement target. If global warming rises above 1.5 degrees Celsius, Khalfan says, half a million people will face water insecurity, ecosystems will be destroyed and there will be unprecedented levels of extreme heat. To avoid these risks, Khalfan suggests that the public become more radical in pressuring their governments to take action, especially in high-income countries.
Guterres will have a chance to confront leaders whose climate pledges fall short when he attends the G20 summit in India this weekend. In November, countries will submit their latest climate action pledges at the UN Climate Summit in Dubai.
“Governments must essentially say that we either accept catastrophic climate change because we are unwilling to provide the resources, or we are unwilling to accept catastrophic climate change and are willing to provide the resources. It has to be one or the other,” said Khalfan.
“With less than three months to go before this crucial climate assessment is published, we call out the G20 for their failed ambition and action. Unless G20 countries substantially improve their NDCs, they are effectively spelling ‘surrender’ in the face of the existential crisis of our times,” Dabi said.
“People living in poverty and in lower-income countries suffer the most. We look to the world’s super emitters for solutions, but find that their numbers simply don’t add up today.”
In the coming weeks, the world will be watching its leaders to see if they can take the drastic but necessary steps to take responsibility for climate action.
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