Its first meeting was in Berlin in 1995.
Advertisement
A Western University assistant professor will be among the 20,000 delegates helping hammer out a new climate change agreement in Paris.
French President Francoise Hollande is now addressing a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting press conference on climate change.
In June, South Korea offered to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 37 percent by 2030 from 850.6 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, an amount Seoul says it would reach if it lets business run as usual.
Some groups continue to question the link between such human activities and higher greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
As President Xi has pointed out, responding to climate change is what China needs to do both to achieve sustainable development at home and to fulfill its worldwide obligations as a responsible major country.
The deal now on the table at the upcoming Paris climate talks would be a big step toward limiting global warming at or near 2 degrees Celsius – deemed a critical environmental threshold by climate scientists. In 2009, 63 percent of the people asked perceived climate change as an issue which needs to be urgently addressed.
“In fact, there is no aspect of our daily life which is not impacted by climate change”.
But formal negotiations among governments started only after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, which eventually led to the formation of the UNFCCC.
They also agreed to report on their progress in reducing their emissions.
That was followed in 1997 by the Kyoto Protocol, the first-ever emissions reductions treaty.
First, durability. Paris must provide a long-term vision consistent with a below-2-degrees trajectory and send a clear signal to markets that the low-carbon transformation of the global economy is inevitable, beneficial and under way. A $100 billion annual fund to be available from 2020 has made no great leap, having received only pledges of aid.
“People from all over the world are flocking to Paris to have their voices heard on one of the most urgent challenges of our lifetime – the threat of climate change”. It is tasked with developing a new climate agreement to be adopted in 2015 and enter into force from 2020.
These Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs, extend through 2025 or 2030 and will form the backbone of the universal climate-rescue pact.
“It is certainly true that in the run-up to Copenhagen there was very broad global support and enthusiasm to see a strong outcome”, he told BBC News. Policy analysts say financing could be one of the sticking points at the Paris talks.
For governments, this would mean scrapping subsidies for these industries. He has also called a proposal for reviewing carbon-cutting pledges in 2017/18-two years before they go into effect-“absolutely ridiculous”.
Advertisement
However, and most importantly, even if all of these submitted conditionals are implemented as-is, global emissions will still continue to increase until at least 2030, and leave an emissions gap of 14 Gt of CO2-equivalent to the emission levels deemed necessary to halt warming to 2°C.
