Squaring the Circle of Mitigation Adequacy and Equity

Countries are currently negotiating a new international climate agreement, which is supposed to be concluded in 2015 and become applicable in 2020. Ecofys Germany, Climate Analytics, the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI), the Öko-Institut and the Wuppertal Institute are conducting the research project "Mitigation Commitments and Fair Effort Sharing in a New Comprehensive Climate Agreement Starting 2020" on behalf of the German Environment Agency, which aims to develop proposals on the issue of emission reductions commitments in the 2015 agreement.

The Federal German Environment Agency has now published the first interim report of the project. The report surveys current proposals and positions on issues such as differentiated participation of countries in the new agreement, a differentiated spectrum of commitments, effort sharing and options for how to organise the negotiation process. The report finds that for the level of participation, the selection of commitment types, and choice of effort-sharing approaches there is no silver bullet. A portfolio approach that incorporates multiple options may be most suited to ensure environmental effectiveness, cost- effectiveness and political feasibility.

Decisions taken at the 2013 climate conference in Warsaw set the process to arrive at differentiated mitigation commitments by 2015 on a path towards a mostly bottom-up approach, wherein the individual countries would determine the level of ambition of their respective commitments mostly by themselves. This is unlikely to directly deliver the required level of aggregate ambition to limit warming below 2°C - or even 1.5°C. There is still a window of opportunity to define a review process during 2014 that would enable a rigorous evaluation of initial offers and create the political pressure to enhance ambition. The summit organised by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon in 2014 will be an important milestone in this process.

Key to ensure political pressure is that the most vulnerable - and least responsible for the problem - are able to impact the decision on the overall level of commitments. This requires a process that involves reaching a joint agreement. However, even with a rigorous review process and the need to reach joint agreement, commitments are unlikely to be sufficient. Ultimately the conscious consideration of the length of the commitment period and a formal process for regular review of commitments will be crucial to ensure that ambition can be ramped up suitably fast.

The report can be downloaded from the website of the German environment agency.