COP21

COP21

You may have heard of COP21; the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference. It is the 21st annual meeting since the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of the Conference of the Parties (COP), and the 11th since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol of the Meeting of the Parties (CMP).

The aim of COP21 is to reach an agreement to tackle climate change. Such agreement will be agreed in 2015 and implemented by 2020. For an agreement to be reached every single of the 195 members must sign, a value which has been a hurdle in previous meetings. The key measure that COP21 hopes to achieve is to limit global warming to 2°C by 2100, with the pre-industrial era the starting point. Any temperature increase above 2°C is predicted to result in serious climate catastophese.

In 2013 Anderson and Bows summarised 'there is now little to no chance of maintaining the global mean surface temperature at or below 2°C'. Furthermore, 'the impacts associated with 2°C have been revised upwards, sufficiently so that 2°C now more appropriately represents the threshold between ‘dangerous’ and ‘extremely dangerous’ climate change'. Stocker puts this into numbers. For a 2°C rise in temperature we can emit 790billion tonnes of Carbon. Currently, we have emitted 535billion tonnes already, leaving us with another 255billion before climate change dramtically changes our planet. Stocker estimates 10billion tonnes of Carbon are emitted/year. This gives us another 25years at current emission rates. But, emissions are still rising as Less Economically Developed Countries from around the world continue to develop and demand more electricity and fuel in pursuit of a higher quality of life.

Before the conference all parties sumbitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). These outline commitments they would be prepared to make and any aid they would need to achieve such commitments. Analysis of these by the UN predicted such contributions would limit climate change to 2.7°C, significantly higher than the aim.

For COP21 to be branded a success I think significantly higher contributions will have to be realised and adopted by all. The contributions made my states directly impacts the electricity production mix they will adopt in the future. Hence, the larger the contributions are for reducing Carbon emisssions, the larger the commitment to renewable electricity sources will be.