December last year in Paris, world leaders came together to agree on a set of goals and ways to decarbonize the global economy and increasing the world’s capacity to adapt to climate change.
It was a landmark achievement, but it was just the beginning. Every country — with the support of cities, the private sector and citizens — must now move swiftly to fulfil its promises and bring climate change under control.
The need for urgent, concerted action cannot be emphasized enough. Any delay would cause negative consequences to continue to accumulate. This would not only cause tremendous suffering, especially to the world’s most vulnerable people; it would reverberate for decades to come, making the key goal of keeping the increase in global temperatures to less than 2°C (relative to pre-industrial levels) increasingly costly.
The rapid progress that is needed would require major reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, achieved through increased investment in the development and expansion of cleaner and more efficient energy.
At the same time, efforts to conserve and expand carbon “sinks” — the forests, wetlands, grasslands, mangroves and sea grasses that absorb much of the carbon dioxide being emitted — are crucial.
However, even under the most optimistic scenarios, it would take time to engineer a global shift away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy sources and to restore the world’s badly depleted ecological infrastructure.
That is why it is important to pursue measures to reduce short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), which also cause climate change. These include black carbon or soot (the primary component of particulate matter that is also a major and growing health concern); hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), used most commonly in refrigeration; and methane and tropospheric (or ground-level) ozone.
Kilogram for kilogram, these “super pollutants” cause much more warming than carbon dioxide. Indeed, the warming impact of soot is about 900 times greater than that of carbon, and the impact of methane is about 28 times greater; many HFCs have a warming impact that is about 2,000 times more powerful than that of carbon dioxide.
The problems caused by SLCPs extend beyond climate change. Black carbon and tropospheric ozone pollution are traditional air pollutants, which together kill nearly 7 million people per year and destroy hundreds of millions of tonnes of food crops.
The UN Environment Programme’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants estimates that fast action to reduce SLCPs, especially methane and black carbon, has the potential to slow down the warming expected by 2050 by as much as 0.5°C. Moreover, it could save more than 2 million lives annually, while preventing the loss of more than 30 million tonnes of crops per year.
There is reason to hope that the world can reap these benefits. Under the Paris agreement, individual countries are to achieve emissions reductions according to their own nationally determined contributions. More than a dozen countries have included SLCPs in their national climate action plans.
Furthermore, the coalition is working with its 50 member countries, as well as the World Bank and the WHO, to cut the super pollutants.
However, to be successful, efforts must go above and beyond the Paris agreement.
Fortunately, progress is being made here, too.
Measures to mitigate HFC production and consumption are already being pursued through the Montreal Protocol on protecting the ozone layer.
Governments opened formal negotiations in November last year, and are aiming to reach an agreement by the end of this year. This builds on an impressive phaseout of older chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons and others, that has averted the equivalent of 135 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, while accelerating the recovery of the ozone layer.
Of course, the reduction of SLCPs should not come at the expense of efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions. On the contrary, the world can and must reduce both simultaneously
Efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are also occurring outside the Paris agreement framework. The International Civil Aviation Organization is working to reduce emissions from air travel, having reached a preliminary agreement on the subject just a few weeks ago. The International Maritime Organization is pursuing similar goals for shipping.
Warming from any climate pollutant is dangerous and sets in motion a series of potentially irreversible effects, including the continued rise of sea levels, destruction of forests, depletion of Arctic sea ice and glaciers in Greenland and the Tibetan Plateau and melting of permafrost.
Making matters worse, these effects can reinforce one another, tipping the entire planet into a vicious cycle that becomes ever more difficult to escape.
If the world acts fast, harvesting fresh momentum on HFCs under sister agreements like Montreal and a growing array of cooperative coalitions, it can avoid disaster and ensure long-term economic development, including by supporting progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Simply put, the rate of action on all climate-related emissions will determine success in eradicating poverty and will shape the world future generations will inherit.
With governments preparing to sign the Paris agreement on April 22, there has never been a better opportunity to press ahead toward a brighter, cleaner, more prosperous future.
Achim Steiner is executive director and undersecretary-general of the UN Environment Programme.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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