The Country’s Climate Plans Judgement
For me, this year has been another promising step for climate mitigation progress. The emerges of Glasgow Climate Pact amidst COP 26 negotiation stage might be a chance for bolstering the global climate policy infrastructure. Also, the article 6 of Paris Rulebook (one of the Paris Agreement 2015 products) seems off from the grey area. The current progress on halting the climate crisis is entering the new era.
However, countries need more ambitious action to pursue the Paris agreement’s cap on global warming. At least, there is a slight window time until next year to ensure their climate commitments. Then, a tickle question (I bet it also important) arises. Who will track that their promises really do stack up? Well, I do small research about such thing, some scholars mark such question as sensitive enigma. The answer is the countries themselves and there is no formal organization tasked with making sure individual nations are on track.
A climatologist, Corinne Le Quere, said on Agence France-Presse (AFP), “there are no ‘police’ to check. This is a weakness of the process.” This condition will effectively mark its own climate homework. The process means countries can move forward at the pace suited to their political system. For instance, Indonesia, we already adopted the Paris Agreement through Act number 16/2016 and utilized the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) as a tracer. And just like another country status, so far, it has not pulled down emissions nearly fast enough.
On the other side, annual analysis by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) mentioned about the gap between climate commitments and actual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It drills down into slightly more detail, including a particular focus on richer nations from the G20. They also responsible for around 80 percent of global emissions. Another prediction made by United Nation’s climate change body (UNFCCC) touted countries’ 2030 emissions reduction plans will lead to warming of a devastating 2.7 degrees.
In fact, experts doubt that nations would agree to any formal external scrutiny. Still, there are several non-government organizations to cover the gap. A few independent analyses, such as Climate Action Tracker (CAT), which calculates countries’ estimated trajectory — toward 1.5 degrees, 2 degrees, 3 degrees or worse. For further, civil society, the media and even other nations will all push governments to do more. Western diplomat so-called the condition as peer pressure works. How countries that are not in line with the Paris agreement will feel they are in the hot seat.
One of the appealing parts from Paris agreement, for me related to above issue, is the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” according to national situations. So, some believes that wealthy countries, largely responsible for global warming, have a duty to the poorest and should therefore do more to achieve a fair contribution. In fact, there are multiple ways to measure this, such as historical emissions, emissions per capita, carbon footprint that takes into account emissions generated by imported goods, aid to poor countries.
At the end, essentially, all countries need to go back and see if there is anything we can do more and quicker for curbing the global warming.
