Thursday, October 28, 2010

Copenhagen Accord Targets

My latest post for Th!nk4: Climate Change:

As we approach the Cancún COP16 December meeting of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, it is worth looking at what came out of Copenhagen.

USCAN (Climate Action Network) maintain an interactive map, tracking how countries have responded to their Copenhagen Accord commitments:

Countries Engaged with Copenhagen Accord
This graphic automatically updates as countries respond.


A detailed table is available on their website.


This week Frank Jotzo, Director of the Centre for Climate Economics & Policy and Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University's Crawford School, has published an analysis of progress, 'Copenhagen targets and Australia’s climate commitment':

An analysis that puts the different pledges on a common footing and compares them across the different metrics (Jotzo 2010) shows that the pledges given by both major developed and developing countries imply significant effort, and that on the whole they are broadly comparable across important metrics. This allows a cautiously optimistic assessment of the prospect for countries actually following through with their pledges.

He argues for 15% target for Australia compared with the current 5% and advocates a carbon price:

Cutting Australia’s emissions cost-effectively will require carbon pricing, possibly starting with a fixed price permit scheme. Investments in emission reductions in developing countries are also likely to be part of a cost-effective approach.

The full article can be downloaded here.

Australia's Gillard minority Labor government is committed to a carbon price but more on that later.

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