The Paris Agreement aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all member countries to fight against climate change. For this you must avoid increasing the average temperatures of the planet above 2 ° C.
A team of researchers from the Department of Applied Economics and the Energy, Economics and Systems Dynamics Group of the University of Valladolid (UVa) (Spain) has analyzed the proposals of 188 countries at the last Paris Climate Conference (COP21) , on greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Do you want to know the results of these investigations and the scenario that awaits us?
The objective of the Paris Agreement
Researchers who have analyzed the emission reduction proposals have warned that, in the most optimistic scenario in which all the proposals are met, temperatures would rise between 3 and 4 degrees by 2050. In other words, the efforts of the Paris Agreement, as they currently are, are insufficient to stop climate change and its irreversible changes on the planet's ecosystems.
For the scientific community, the two degrees increase in the global average temperature is a sure barrier to the most drastic changes that could occur. Rising temperatures is not following a linear pattern, but exponential and from a certain point on, some mechanism will be activated to trigger this increase even higher. This time could be when the ice at the North Pole eventually melts, the Earth's albedo will change, and the oceans will absorb more heat, causing temperatures to rise faster.
In order not to reach an increase in average temperatures such that they cause irreversible changes on the planet, all countries presented Nationally Determined Expected Contributions. These are various action plans that set out the amount of gas emissions that each country will reduce and the policies that will be needed to achieve that goal.
“The Paris Agreement leaves everything in the hands of the proposals made by each of the countries. It goes from a multilateral climate governance model, as it was the Kyoto Protocol, to one based on unilateralism and voluntariness, because each country has the obligation to make a proposal but not to comply with it, nor is there an external body that is in charge of controlling its compliance ”, underlines Jaime Nieto, researcher at UVa.
Analysis of the proposals by countries
The research team has analyzed the countries' emission reduction proposals from a political and financing point of view. In this way they can quantify the variation in emissions globally which will entail the application of these proposals and their contribution to the fight against climate change.
Once the proposals have been analyzed, it has been concluded that, if all are met (despite the fact that they are not binding), the global average temperature would increase between 3 and 4 degrees, an increase that would almost double the initial objective of two degrees considered "safe".
On the other hand, in the Paris Agreement, the proposals that are barely transparent are not taking into account the impacts that the countries' economic growth may have. Researchers have calculated the actual emissions that each country will have in 2030, since this Agreement sets the horizon for this year. Each country would emit an average of 37,8% more than in the period 2005-2015. China, currently the main GHG emitter and India, which is in fifth place, they would be responsible for almost 20% of these emissions.
"Systems dynamics models allow us to analyze what is going to happen in the future in terms of trends and assess different scenarios according to the policies that are developed. For us it was essential to analyze the most important agreement that has been in terms of transition to economies low carbon in recent years, the Paris Agreement ”, concludes Nieto.