Sarah Elzas of Modern Ghana writes about how the world fails to meet Paris agreement emissions targets.
The reduction in carbon emissions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has done nothing to slow the earth's warming, warns a United Nations report. Other analyses released this week, ahead of next month's Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, show that the world is not meeting emissions reductions targets set out in the 2015 Paris agreement.
The global economic downturn caused by Covid only temporarily reduced CO2 emissions, and not enough to reverse temperature increases, says the United in Science 2021 report, released during the week.
The report, published by a range of UN agencies and scientific partners, presents the latest scientific findings related to climate change.
Carbon emissions shrunk by 5.6 percent in 2020, after peaking in 2019. But now that Covid-19 restrictions are lifting and economies are starting up again, outside aviation and sea transport, global emissions in the first months of 2021 have gone back up, and are at about the same levels as in 2019.
The report warns that emissions will continue to rise as the world is not meeting its carbon reduction targets, which means that global temperatures will increase beyond what was set out in the 2015 Paris agreement.
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The agreement, made at the Cop21 summit, called for capping global warming at below 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, ideally to 1.5C.
“Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to 1.5 C will be impossible, with catastrophic consequences for people and the planet," wrote United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the report's foreword. > Read More