Climate change part 03 - Conventions Related to Climate Change

LINK : PART 1 -    • Climate Change   Part 1   Global Warm...  
LINK : PART 2 -    • Climate Change Part 02 - Steps taken ...  

Conventions on Climate Change
The Convention on Climate Change sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change.

1. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change UNFCCC :
Its objective is to "stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system"

• The Kyoto Protocol legally binds developed countries to emission reduction targets. The Protocol’s first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. important conventions and protocols upsc The second commitment period began on 1 January 2013 and will end in 2020.

• There are now 195 Parties to the Convention and 192 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Protocol entered into force on 16 February 2005. Since then, the Parties to the Protocol has continued the negotiations and has amended the Protocol to achieve more ambitious results by 2030.
2. Paris Climate Agreement 2015 :
• In short, Paris Agreement is an international agreement to combat climate change.
• From 30 November 2015 to 11 December 2015, the governments of 195 nations gathered in Paris and discussed a possible new global agreement on climate change, aimed at reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and thus reducing the threat of dangerous climate change.
Aims of Paris Agreement :
• Keep the global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level.
• Strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change.

Paris Agreement: Things to note
• The key vision of Paris Agreement is to keep global temperatures “well below” 2°C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times and “endeavor to limit” them even more, to 1.5°C.
• The Paris Agreement has a ‘bottom up’ structure in contrast to most international environmental law treaties which are ‘top down.
• The paris climate accord agreement is binding in some elements like reporting requirements, while leaving other aspects of the deal such as the setting of emissions targets for any individual country as non-binding.
Paris Agreement (2015) vs Kyoto Protocol (1997) :
• Paris Agreement is the world’s first comprehensive climate agreement. Although developed and developing countries were parties to Kyoto Protocol, developing countries were not mandated to reduce their emissions.
• Paris Agreement was reached on the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP)and the eleventh session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP)
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) :
• The national pledges by countries to cut emissions are voluntary.
• The Paris Agreement requires all Parties to put forward their best efforts through “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) and to strengthen these efforts in the years ahead.

Why is Paris Agreement important?
• Current commitments on greenhouse gas emissions (Kyoto Protocol) will expire in 2020. Paris Agreement deals with what should be done in the decade after 2020 and beyond this time frame.
• The text of the agreement includes a provision requiring developed countries to send $100 billion annually to their developing counterparts beginning in 2020.
3. International Solar Alliance (ISA) :
• It is an alliance of about 121 nations announced by France and India, for countries lying partly or completely between the tropics to harness their solar energy potential by collaborative efforts in the field of solar technologies.
• The framework agreement of the International Solar Alliance opened for signatures in Marrakech, Morocco in November 2016, and 121 countries have joined.
Three Objectives :
• To force down prices by driving demand,
• To bring standardization in solar technologies and
• To foster research and development.

4. Mission Innovation is important for Mission Innovation upsc :

• It is a global initiative of 22 countries and EU to accelerate global clean energy innovation.
• Participating countries have committed to double their governments’ clean energy R&D investments over 5 years.
• It also seeks to encourage private sector investment in transformative clean energy technologies.

5. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) :
• It refers to a market mechanism for achieving GHG emissions reduction under the Kyoto protocol.
• It allows an industrialized/developed country with an emission-reduction target under the Kyoto Protocol to implement an emission-reduction project in any of those developing countries and earn tradable Certified Emission Reduction (CER) credits, each equivalent to one ton of CO2.
• Between 2003-11, a total of 2,295 projects have been registered in India under CDM, second highest in the world after China.