{"id":82661,"date":"2016-11-14T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=82661"},"modified":"2016-11-07T20:11:03","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T20:11:03","slug":"united-nations-meet-to-turn-climate-pledges-into-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/11\/united-nations-meet-to-turn-climate-pledges-into-action\/","title":{"rendered":"United Nations Meet to Turn Climate Pledges into Action"},"content":{"rendered":"

Systems to track and review each country\u2019s progress will be put into place.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Executive<\/a>

Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Christiana Figueres (L 2), Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki Moon (C), Foreign Affairs Minister and President-designate of COP21 Laurent Fabius (R 2), and France’s President Francois Hollande (R) raise hands together after adoption of a historic global warming pact at the COP21 Climate Conference in Le Bourget, north of Paris, on December 12, 2015. Credit: ARNAUD BOUISSOU, COP21, Anadolu Agency, Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

7 Nov 2016 – <\/em>Nearly 200 nations are meeting today in Marrakech, Morocco, for the United Nations annual climate conference. The two-week 22nd Conference of the Parties, or COP 22, starts just days after the 2015 Paris climate accord entered into legal force\u2014meaning that countries are legally bound to meet their targets\u2014on November 4. And although many are celebrating this latest success, country representatives at COP 22 now must hash out how they are going to live up to their pledges\u2014namely, curbing CO2 emissions so that the world can avoid climate change\u2019s worst effects.<\/p>\n

Many people expected it would take years, possibly decades, to ratify the Paris accord. Instead, it took only months before enough countries\u201455 nations representing 55 percent of global emissions\u2014had joined the agreement so that it could take effect. As of today, 97 countries that produce 69 percent of worldwide emissions have ratified<\/a> it. In doing so they have promised to do their part to limit emissions so that global temperatures do not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The agreement also encourages nations to try to go further and limit a global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C.<\/p>\n

The accord was a big deal because nations promised to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by specific amounts. The U.S., for instance, pledged<\/a> to cut its emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. Now at COP 22, nations will focus on how to implement the agreement. They are set to figure out how to make sure nations meet their pledges, which means devising ways to track and report countries\u2019 emissions, and check on their progress. Negotiators will also discuss how to do the five-year reviews of everyone\u2019s climate action plans, during which countries will regularly assess whether they are meeting or should raise their pledged emissions cuts. Developed nations also must sort out the details of providing financial support to developing countries. The latter have been promised $100 billion per year in funding, but it is unclear whether wealthy nations have committed enough yet to reach that number. Representatives still need to work out issues such as what exactly counts as climate finance and how to use the funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the \u2018year of action\u2019 and the years ahead are the years of implementation,\u201d explains Paula Caballero, global director of the World Resources Institute\u2019s Climate Program. \u201cBy 2018, we need to see clarification on the rules and processes for implementing the historic agreement we set out in Paris last year.\u201d Although that means we probably will not have the sort of exciting grand finale we saw in Paris last year, COP 22 is still critical to solving our climate challenge.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s U.N. summit comes after a year of intense progress on combating climate change. In October more than 170 countries reached a deal to phase out their use of potent greenhouse gases known as hydrofluorocarbons. The aviation industry also recently agreed to limit or offset its carbon emissions. But even so, the world is not on track to meet its climate goal. A U.N. report<\/a> released just last week found that if every country met its Paris emissions pledge, global temperatures would still rise above the 2 degree C cutoff. COP 22 is necessary to initiate important work toward meeting that limit, but for the world there still is a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 scientificamerican.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Systems to track and review each country\u2019s progress will be put into place. The Conference of the Parties (COP 22) and the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 12) will be held in Marrakech, Morocco from 7-18 November 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}