The pivotal Paris Agreement pushed forward by the United Nations in 2015, represents the commitment of 196 signatory countries to avoid the dangerous consequences of anthropogenic climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C and aiming for a target of 1.5°C warming above pre-industrial levels. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a special report in 2018 that on global warming of 1.5°C reinforced the devastating and widespread impacts of a 2°C or warmer world for current and future generations and the prospects for irreversible climate tipping points. To keep the Paris Agreement 1.5°C target within reach, the IPCC (2018) stressed that global CO2 emissions must decline 45% by 2030 (from 2010 level) and to net zero by 2050.
How are countries supporting one another? The Paris Agreement provides a framework for financial, technical and capacity building support to those countries who need it.
Finance
The Paris Agreement reaffirms that developed countries should take the lead in providing financial assistance to countries that are less endowed and more vulnerable, while for the first time also encouraging voluntary contributions by other parties. Climate finance is needed for mitigation, because large scale investments are required to significantly reduce emissions. Climate finance is equally important for adaptation, as significant financial resources are needed to adapt to the adverse effects and reduce the impacts of a changing climate.
Technology
The Paris Agreement speaks of the vision of fully realising technology development and transfer for both improving resilience to climate change and reducing GHG emissions. It establishes a technology framework to provide overarching guidance to the well-functioning technology mechanism. The mechanism is accelerating technology development and transfer through its policy and implementation arms.
Capacity Building
Not all developing countries have sufficient capacities to deal with many of the challenges brought by climate change. As a result, the Paris Agreement places great emphasis on climate related capacity building for developing countries and requests all developed countries to enhance support for capacity building actions in developing countries.
Our earth is facing more and more extreme adversarial weather conditions, such as a few weeks ago in the United States, where at least 45 people died after the remnants of Hurricane Ida slammed the east coast. A record breaking 88.9mm inches of rain fell in Central Park in New York city in just one hour creating huge floods.
A month ago in China, the capital city of Henan province ZhengZhou City with a population of over 10 million, faced a rainfall event which was claimed to be 1 in a 1,000 years. The consequence was 69 citizens lost their precious lives ultimately. The city recorded an astonishing 644.6mm of rain in just 24 hours on 21-Jul-2021. This is literally more than a year's worth of its average annual rain.
As a responsible human being, every one of us should act immediately to reverse the detrimental climate change. In the next bow-tie briefing, we will discuss in detail how our corporate travel industry can react to the IEA roadmap to net zero by 2050, please stay tuned. 😊