The Paris Agreement stocktake: this ship can sink

By Robert McLachlan

The 2016 Paris Agreement contains a built-in feedback mechanism to help ensure that its goals are met: the Global Stocktake. Every five years all pledges and progress are assessed and compared to the targets on warming, adaptation, and financing. A “ratchet” mechanism is intended to prevent backsliding. (“Each Party’s successive nationally determined contribution will represent a progression beyond the Party’s then current nationally determined contribution…”)

The technical reporting on the first Global Stocktake is now out, and the results will be discussed at COP28 in December 2023. There has been some progress. In 2010 the expected global warming was 3.7–4.8ºC – basically toast. The initial Paris Agreement pledges in 2016 were assessed at limiting warming to 3.0-3.2ºC, and the call in 2020 for updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) resulted in the forecast being lowered to 2.4–2.6ºC.

But a key figure in the new report still shows a significant gap:

For the “well below 2ºC” target, emissions must fall 21% between 2019 and 2030; for “1.5ºC”, they must fall 43%. Current NDCs add up to between –8% and +3%.

The report offers a lot of now-familiar suggestions on how to do better. (Phasing out internal combustion engines, shifting to walking and public transport, disinvesting from emissions-intensive activities.) But there is less on how to actually accomplish these in the face of opposition (“creativity and innovation in policymaking and international cooperation are needed”).

What I wanted to know was how countries are performing on actually achieve their targets. On that, the report is mostly silent, so I turned to the NGO Climate Action Tracker, which publishes independent periodic assessments of NDCs and associated progress.

Here are the results for the world’s top 10 emitters (plus New Zealand).

	GHG MtCO2e	CO2e/cap	consistent with…	Is NDC sufficient for a 1.5 ºC world?	2030 target (vs 2019)	2030 (predicted)
China	12700	9	< 3 ºC	insufficient	+0%	+0%
USA	6000	18	<2 ºC	almost sufficient	-41%	-23%
India	3400	2.5	>4 ºC	critically insufficient	+45%	+30%
EU	3400	7	<2 ºC	almost sufficient	-36%	-42%
Russia	2500	13	<4 ºC	highly insufficient	+17%	+9%
Japan	1200	9	<2 ºC	almost sufficient	-33%	-22%
Brazil	1100	7	<2 ºC	almost sufficient	-11%	+7%
Indonesia	1000	7	>4 ºC	critically insufficient	+70%	+20%
Iran	900	10	>4 ºC	critically insufficient	+82%	+12%
Canada	700	21	<2 ºC	almost sufficient	-40%	-15%
New Zealand	80	16	<2 ºC	almost sufficient	-36%	-9%

Five of the ten have adequate targets and are reducing emissions, but only one (the EU) is on track to meet or exceed its target.

Four of the ten have woefully insufficient targets, but are on track to exceed them.

The last one is China, on track to meet its (still insufficient) target.

If all ten achieved the best of either their target or their actual progress, emissions would fall 10% by 2030. The total effort would still need to be doubled even from this benchmark.

New Zealand is a bit of a special case. We have a reasonable target, even though it doesn’t meet the 1.5ºC condition written into the Zero Carbon Act. But there is almost nothing going on nationally towards working out how to meet it. Most attention is paid to meeting the domestic carbon budgets, which are on track for 2022-2025 but need more work for 2026-2030. However, the domestic carbon budgets still fall short of meeting the NDC, by about 100 million tonnes of CO2e or nearly two years of net emissions.

The original idea was to source this from overseas. We could pay for emissions reductions in another country, although they wouldn’t then be able to count it towards their own target. And if that country – Indonesia, say – has a weaker target than our own, we would then have weakened our own overall effort as well. Christina Hood has addressed this issue in a number of articles.

How is the government managing delivery of the NDC?

We don’t know. No policy has been announced for how much extra domestic effort will be targeted and how this would be delivered, how & when international cooperation will start, or how the extra investment in emissions reductions (domestically and internationally) will be funded. The projected cost of closing the gap – whether by domestic or international action – is not currently reflected in the Crown accounts. There is even no provision to cover excess emissions that have already occurred.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-take-deliver-new-zealands-paris-agreement-ndc-christina-hood

The National Party have said they would meet the NDC, but at the same time their climate spokesperson Simon Watts said in an election debate that his party would not be “writing cheques to offshore entities”. Their fossil fuel mining, domestic emissions reductions, and adaptation plans are scary too. Over at The Spinoff, Nadine Anne Hura managed to find not one but at least a dozen analogies with the movie Titanic, such as this one:

Act and National are promising a swathe of policies that will get New Zealand “back on track”. These sentiments seem to echo Mr Ismay’s insistence that the “ship can’t sink,” and should speed up rather than slow down. In this iconic scene, Mr Andrews, the ship’s builder, replies to Mr Ismay with all the gravity of the International Panel on Climate Change: “She’s made of iron, sir. I assure you she can sink, and she will. It’s a mathematical certainty.”