THE LANCET COUNTDOWN ON HEALTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE
CONTEXT
- New research from The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change highlights the benefits to health if countries adopt climate plans – Nationally Determined Contributions – that are consistent with the Paris Agreement aim of limiting warming to “well below 2°C”.
MORE ABOUT REPORT
- New research from The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, published in a special issue of The Lancet Planetary Health Journal, highlights the benefits to health if countries adopt climate plans – Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – that are consistent with the Paris Agreement aim of limiting warming to “well below 2°C”.
- The countries considered in the study represent 50 per cent of the world’s population and 70 per cent of the world’s emissions – Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK and the US.
- It looked at three scenarios: carrying on the current path, increasing efforts to achieve the Paris goals, and a more ambitious scenario, which put health at the heart of tackling climate change.
- If India can adhere to its commitments, then the study indicates it would be able to save 4.3 lakh lives due to cleaner air and 17.41 lakh lives due to better diet.
WHAT ARE THE PARIS AGREEMENT GOALS?
- Article 2 of the Paris Agreement identifies its purpose as:
- Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.
- Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production.
- Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.
ISSUES IN ACHIEVING THE PLEDGED TARGETS
- Finance – Developed nations promised in 2009 to mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020, from both public and private sources, to help developing nations limit their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to more floods, heat waves and rising sea levels.
- The main group of more than 130 developing nations wants ever higher figures beyond 2020. The United States, the European Union and other rich na tions do not want to guarantee higher figures.
- The international community will need to successfully reconcile the disconnect between the bottom-up ambition in current NDCs and the Paris Agreement’s top-down, long-term temperature goals. The aggregate level of pledged emissions reductions specified in current NDCs is not nearly sufficient to meet the Paris Agreement’s mitigation goals
- Low-emissions pathways consistent with the Paris Agreement require global emissions to peak as soon as possible, with a subsequent rapid fall in emissions, and net emissions approaching zero or becoming negative in the second half of the century.
- The hard-wiring of our economies to the use of fossil-fuels means that the transition to low-emissions, climate-resilient development pathways will require broader, transformative change.
- Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement will require emission reductions beyond industry and energy sectors. Globally, emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land-use (AFOLU) contribute around a quarter of total GHG emissions. Land sectors act as both a source of GHGs, for example methane from livestock and rice carbon dioxide from land-clearing, and nitrous oxide from fertiliser use, and as a sink for greenhouse gases (e.g. sustainable forestry)
- Enhancing resilience will require capacity development and policy reforms. Current development patterns are often increasing countries’ exposure to climate change impacts: for example, through the growth of low-lying coastal cities or the degradation of ecosystems and the services they provide.
- The transition to low emissions, climate-resilient development pathways needs to be inclusive. As Poverty is considered as biggest polluter.
WAY FORWARD
- To achieve the scale and pace of reductions required to meet the Paris temperature goal, short-term NDCs need to align and be coherent with the transformational national emissions pathways required by 2050 and beyond.
- Reducing carbon emissions efficiently and at a sufficiently significant scale will require strengthened and expanded carbon pricing measures.
- Reforming and phasing-out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies is another core measure for the transition.
- Governments will need to scale up climate action in the agriculture, forestry and other land-use sectors. Priority actions include nature-based solutions for mitigation such as protecting current stocks of carbon in tropical forests, grasslands and other ecosystems and enhancing the ability of ecosystems to act as carbon sinks wherever possible
- It is crucial that countries plan holistically and develop mechanisms to improve policy coherence across the interlinked issues of global food demand, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
- Non-state actor (NGOs) continue to have a vital role to play in helping national governments overcome the barriers to more ambitious and urgent action