Paris: Countries that have registered with Paris approved benign climate change needed to be more ambitious in their own national efforts, the head of the UN climate said on Saturday.
Only more than half the country which is the party on the agreement has submitted an updated proposal to limit their carbon emissions, said Patricia Espinosa in a statement.
And “the level of ambitions reflected in the national climate action plan also need to be improved,” he said.
The Paris Agreement is an international agreement that is legally binding on climate change adopted by 196 countries in December 2015 with the aim of limiting global warming to far below 2 degrees Celsius and preferably up to 1.5C, compared to pre-industrial levels.
Under the Accord, each participating country initially has up to the end of 2020 to submit the new “contribution nationally” or “NDC”.
But because of the global coronavirus pandemic and the postponement of the COP26 climate conference at Glasgow until November 2021, a number of governments said they would not be able to meet deadlines.
By the new cutting date on Friday, “The Secretariat (has) received a new NDC or updated from 110 parties,” said Espinosa, including the United States, who returned to the Paris agreement after former President Donald Trump was pulled out.
“This compares with new NDCs or updated from 75 parties received until the end of December 2020 …
but it is still far from satisfying, because only a little more than half a party (54 percent) has fulfilled the cut-off deadline.” Inter-government panels About Climate Change (IPCC) has indicated that at the end of this decade, emissions must be reduced by at least 45 percent compared to the level of 2010.
“Extreme heat waves recently, droughts and floods around the world are terrible warnings that more need to be done, and It’s much faster, to change our path now.
This can only be achieved through more ambitious NDCs, “said Espinosa.