World is in danger of missing Paris climate target, climate summit warned
News 17.12.20
Thursday 17th December 2020
There was widespread coverage of the “Climate Ambition Summit” held online on Dec 12th co-hosted by the UK, France and UN in partnership with Chile and Italy. Overall, the media response was muted.
The Guardian story led with –“The world is still not on track to fulfil the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the UK’s business secretary Alok Sharma warned, after a summit of more than 70 world leaders on the climate crisis ended with few new commitments on greenhouse gas emissions.”
Meanwhile, UN Secretary General António Guterres criticised rich countries for spending 50% more of their pandemic recovery cash on fossil fuels compared to low-carbon energy.Mr Guterres said that 38 countries had already declared a climate emergency and he called on leaders worldwide to now do the same.
In terms of natural climate solutions, here’s what the N4C team and partners recorded:
- The UK recommitted to protecting 30% of land and sea.
- China said it would increase forest stock volume by 6 billion cubic metres from 2005 level by 2030.
- Colombia restated its commitment to plant 180 million trees by 2022.
- Pakistan restated its commitment to plant 10 billion trees over the next 3 years.
- Bangladesh said it is planting 11.5 million tree saplings.
- Bhutan restated its legal commitment to maintain 60% of country under forest cover.
- Ethiopia has planted 9 million of a planned 20 million trees over four years.
- Gabon said its updated NDC will include commitments to further protect its rainforest.
- Belize said it will finalise its REDD+ strategy that will establish a strategy to slow, halt and reverse forest loss and degredation and faciliate the absorbtion of an additional 16Mt of carbon. Also plans to double mangrove protection by increasing areas under protection from 12, 826 ha to 24,826 ha.
- Fiji said it would plant 30 million trees by 2035. Mainstream ocean action as part of the updated NDC.
- Nepal aims to extend protected areas from 23% to 30% by 2030.
- Malawi restated its commitment to restore 4.5 million hectares of degraded forest landscapes by 2030.
- Iceland said it has recently significantly increased efforts in NBS in afforestation, re-vegetation and wetland restoration.
- DRC said REDD+ forest coverage will increase from 58% to 63.5% by 2030.
- Myanmar said its updated NDC will reduce net emissions from forestry sector by 25%, that it will expand carbon sinks, and increase protected areas to cover 10% of total national land by 2030.
- Kazakhstan said it is embracing NBS for adaptation and mitigation. In the next 5 years it aims to plant 2 billion trees.
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