What is the essence of the Paris climate agreement and why is it important? Paris climate agreement. Why is Russia not involved in this? Paris Accords on Carbon Emissions

Image copyright Reuters Image caption On the eve of the signing of the agreement in Paris in 2015, environmental activists sent their greetings to world leaders

Judging by numerous reports, US President Donald Trump has decided to withdraw the country from the Paris climate agreement. He intends to announce his decision on Thursday evening.

The Paris Agreement includes a commitment to reduce emissions carbon dioxide in atmosphere. The implementation of the agreement was discussed at the summit " big seven in Italy last Saturday.

What is the essence of the Paris Agreement, why is it important and what are its main provisions?

In outline

Developed in Paris in December 2015, the climate agreement for the first time in history united the efforts of all world powers to curb climate change. It was approved by 195 countries, which allowed observers to call it historical.

It replaced the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which was in force until then, which established greenhouse gas emission quotas for only a few developed countries, but the United States withdrew from this agreement, and a number of other countries did not comply with the agreements.

The agreement entered into force in November 2016.

What are its key provisions?

• Do not allow the average temperature on the planet to rise above 2°C in relation to the indicators of the pre-industrial era, and, if possible, reduce it to 1.5°C.

• Begin by 2050-2100 to limit greenhouse gas emissions from human industrial activity to levels that trees, soil and the oceans can naturally recycle.

• Revise upwards every five years the contribution of each separate country to reduce harmful emissions into the atmosphere.

• Developed countries should allocate funds to a special climate fund to help poorer states to combat the effects of climate change (for example, natural disasters or sea level rise) and the transition to renewable energy sources.

What remained in the agreement, and what had to be removed?

The most important thing is to keep the rise in temperature on Earth within 2˚С in relation to the indicators of the pre-industrial era - indicators higher than this, according to scientists, will lead to irreversible consequences.

Unfortunately, we are already halfway to this scenario, since average temperatures have risen by almost 1°C since the 19th century, and therefore many countries advocated a more severe limit - up to 1.5°C; these countries included those located in lowlands and therefore at risk of flooding in the event of sea level rise.

As a result, the final text of the agreement included a promise to seek to limit the increase in average temperatures on the planet to 1.5 ° C.

At the same time, for the first time, such an agreement includes a long-term plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and achieve a balance between greenhouse gases arising from human activity and their absorption by seas and forests by the second half of the 21st century.

“If these agreements can be negotiated and implemented, this will mean reducing the balance of greenhouse gas emissions to zero within a few decades. This is in line with the scientific calculations presented by us,” commented John Schoenhuber, director of the Research Institute for Climate Change in Potsdam.

Some call this agreement too vague, since a number of the original goals had to be softened during the negotiations.

"The Paris Agreement is only the first step in a long journey, and some parts of it sadden and upset me, although it is still some kind of progress," said Kumi Naidu, director of Greenpeace International.

What about money?

This issue was one of the most difficult during the negotiations.

Developing countries say they need financial and technological assistance to immediately jump to a carbon-free economy.

At the moment, they have been promised $100 billion a year until 2020, but that is less than many of them expected to receive.

The Paris Agreement obliges the developed countries to support financing of this amount of $100 billion annually until 2020, and, starting from it, agree by 2025 to continue financing this process.

What's next?

Only certain provisions of the Paris Agreement are binding.

National strategies to reduce greenhouse gases are voluntary; besides, the negotiations just stumbled on the question of when it would be necessary to revise them in the direction of tightening.

The Treaty obliges the participants to review the progress achieved in 2018, and then to conduct a similar assessment every five years.

Analysts believe that the Paris Agreement is only First stage implementation of energy-saving technologies, and much more needs to be done.

"Paris is just the starting salvo in the race to a sustainable future," said the Foundation's UK chief executive. wildlife David Nissbaum.

On November 4, the Paris Climate Agreement comes into force. Its initiators expect it to be more successful than the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. But to achieve the goals of the agreement, investments in the environment will have to triple.

UN Headquarters (Photo: Reuters/Pixstream)

What is the essence of the Paris Agreement?

The Paris Climate Agreement was adopted during the climate conference in Paris in December 2015 and signed by most of the world's states in April 2016. It (.pdf) will replace the previous document that regulated global emissions of harmful substances, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. new document Starting from 2020, it will regulate greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides).

At the same time, the text of the agreement does not contain either absolute or relative data on the volume of emissions that a particular country will have to reduce: everything will be voluntary, but all countries that have signed the agreement will have to do this, regardless of the level economic development. The document only sets a common global goal - to keep the growth of global average temperature compared to pre-industrial levels below two degrees Celsius, and to make efforts to limit the rise in temperature to one and a half degrees.

As part of the agreement, developed countries agreed to annually allocate $ 100 billion to developing economies for the implementation of environmental policy. To date, the document has been ratified by 92 of the 197 countries that have signed the agreement, including China, the United States, France, Germany and others.

How realistic are the goals of the agreement?

The goals to limit global warming, stated in the Paris Agreement, look very ambitious and even difficult to realize. Now the readiness of states for one or another amount of reductions in harmful emissions is reflected in the so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) - documents that almost all countries of the world submit to the UN. They are not legally binding. According to a study (.pdf) by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there is a 95 percent chance that temperatures will increase by 3.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century if current emission reduction commitments are met and met. According to the most optimistic estimates (IEA, Climate Action Tracker), the temperature increase will be 2.7 degrees. In the report of the United Nations Program on environment(UNEP) notes that an additional 12-14 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent will be required to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

To turn the tide, the Paris Agreement provides for a five-year review of national emissions reduction contributions starting in 2020. At the same time, the document does not clearly define the mechanisms for monitoring emission reductions (it only notes that the implementation of the provisions of the agreement should be carried out with respect for national sovereignty and not be punitive).

Achieving the targets of the Paris Agreement will also require a significant increase in investment in clean technologies. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has calculated that to meet the temperature rise targets, investment in renewable energy will need to more than triple by 2030 (from the current $270 billion to $900 billion a year).

What did the previous agreement give?

The main difference between the previous global document on climate regulation, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement is that developed economies assumed clear legal obligations to reduce emissions of harmful substances. The legally binding nature of the agreement eventually led to the fact that the US Senate (the second country in the world in terms of harmful emissions) simply refused to ratify it. At the same time, countries such as India and China were not legally bound by the Kyoto Protocol.

The fact that China and the US major countries on greenhouse gas emissions, actually ended up outside the agreement, in 2011, by the time Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol (at the same time, this did not result in any penalties for Ottawa). Calculations by the Global Carbon Project organization show that the protocol did not bring any positive consequences in terms of reducing harmful emissions. Against this background, the achievements of Russia, on which he imposed legal obligations, look significant: Russia by 2012 reduced the amount of harmful emissions by 31.8% from the level of 1990, with obligations only not to exceed this level.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement provides for the reduction of emissions by all its participants, regardless of the level of economic development.

How serious is global warming?

In November 2015, the UK Weather Service reported that pre-industrial levels were exceeded average annual temperature approaching a record high of one degree Celsius. According to NASA, the increase was 0.8 degrees. The average temperature in 1850-1900 is taken as the pre-industrial level.

In 2013, following a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (under the auspices of the UN), a report was released in which the confidence that anthropogenic factors were the main causes of temperature increase since 1951 was estimated at 95%.

An increase in mean annual temperature of more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels could lead to drought, among other things, and adversely affect cereal crops. Other negative effects linked to global warming are rising sea levels, longer seasons forest fires, more destructive hurricanes, melting ice and more.

If in scientific community certainty that the cause global change climate is human activity, close to absolute, the same cannot be said about politicians. In particular, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is an opponent of the theory of the anthropogenic nature of global warming. In May, he announced that he would "cancel" US participation in the Paris Agreement if he won the election.

What will Russia do?

Russia, which as of 2014 was the fourth in terms of emissions of harmful substances, is not yet among the states that have ratified the agreement. The document was signed by Moscow six months ago, in April 2016, by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin. At the same time, he said that Russia's contribution to the Paris Agreement would be to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 70% of 1990 levels.

As Alexander Bedritsky, adviser to the President of Russia, told TASS in June, ratification by the Russian side may not occur until 2019-2020. He also noted that the Russian authorities have not yet begun to develop a national strategy for low-carbon development, pointing out that it will take at least two years to work on the document. “Our business, especially those who supply products for export, understands that it will not be long before it will be impossible to compete in the market with products that have a higher carbon footprint than others,” the presidential adviser said.

However, the attitude Russian business to the Paris Agreement turned out to be ambiguous. Back in December 2015, the main owner of Rusal, Oleg Deripaska, in an interview with the Financial Times, called the Paris Agreement "nonsense" and proposed introducing a global tax on hydrocarbons - from $15 per tonne of CO2 equivalent.

The possible negative consequences of such measures in June 2016 were pointed out by the head Russian Union industrialists and entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin. In his letter to Vladimir Putin, he noted that the Paris Agreement in Russia would create "significant risks for the fuel and energy complex of the Russian Federation, which is of systemic importance for the economy." Shokhin, in particular, noted that the implementation of the proposal for a "tax on hydrocarbons" at a rate of $15 per tonne of CO2 equivalent would cost Russian economy up to $100 billion per year, while the damage from climate change will be 60 billion rubles. in year. According to the head of the RSPP, the obligations under the Paris Agreement can be fulfilled using existing instruments (nuclear and renewable energy) and without resorting to additional regulation of the fuel and energy sector.

The Paris climate agreement has entered into force. Russia signed the document but did not ratify it. Why?

The Paris Climate Agreement came into force. It replaced the Kyoto Protocol: countries agreed to reduce emissions into the atmosphere in order to avoid an environmental catastrophe in the future. The document was ratified by 96 countries, Russia is not among them. Moscow has its own opinion on this matter.

UN Climate Secretary Patricia Espinosa called the adopted document "historic". According to her, this is the basis for "another world." The planet is literally heating up, and countries have the power to keep warming within 2 degrees of pre-industrial levels. If it is higher, then the inevitable catastrophe will happen sooner or later. The Paris Agreement will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2020. The difference between the documents is significant. In fact, all states undertake to limit emissions into the atmosphere: from the United States to Angola, the latter, by the way, has signed and already ratified the document. Another issue is that countries are not limited in numbers and are free to reduce emissions at their discretion.

Andrey Kiselev Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences“If you read its position, it does not do much for anything and obliges the countries that signed it. That is, everyone chooses a certain strategy, despite the fact that everyone seems to agree. At different countries absolutely different views about what and how they will do, but the worst thing is that according to current estimates (this is recognized by the Paris Agreement itself), the measures that have been announced and must be implemented are absolutely insufficient to achieve the goals that are spelled out in the Paris Agreement. agreement. Unless you regard this as a zero approximation, other actions should follow. More efficient."

Russia has signed the Paris Agreement, but has not yet ratified it. First, the country needs to adopt appropriate laws. However, back in the summer, business called on Vladimir Putin not to approve the document. The RSPP said that the implementation of the provisions would have a negative impact on economic growth. The head of the Union, Alexander Shokhin, noted that Russia had already exceeded its obligation to bring emissions into the atmosphere below the level of 1990. Aleksey Kokorin, coordinator of the Climate and Energy Program of the Wildlife Fund, believes that Moscow will ratify the document, but at a more appropriate moment.

Alexey Kokorin Climate and Energy Program Coordinator, Wildlife Fund“The development of world energy, which is reflected in the Paris Agreement, leads to the fact that a number of industries are very associated with large emissions greenhouse gas of course is under pressure. First of all, coal energy, our plans to export coal, in particular, to the Asian market (we should probably consider that they should already be cancelled). This is a very serious impact on Russia, does not depend on our ratification. The ratification itself is a political moment, and when the right moment comes, I think it will be done.”

Meanwhile, from November 1, all Russian gas stations must be equipped with chargers for electric cars. This is how the authorities support the owners of environmentally friendly vehicles. However, only 722 electric vehicles are now registered in Russia.

It was adopted on December 12, 2015 following the 21st Conference of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris.

The agreement aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication efforts, including through:

— Keeping the increase in global average temperature well below 2°C and making efforts to limit the increase in temperature to 1.5°C, which will significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;

— increasing resilience to the adverse impacts of climate change and promoting development with low greenhouse gas emissions in a manner that does not jeopardize food production;

— aligning financial flows in the direction of low-emission, climate-resilient development .

The Paris Agreement determines that specific measures to combat climate change should be aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and their development and implementation is entirely the responsibility of national governments.

The agreement consolidates and formalizes the turn to a new, low-carbon model of economic development based on the gradual abandonment of traditional technologies for the extraction, processing and use of fossil resources (primarily hydrocarbons) in favor of "green" technologies.

By 2020, states must review their national strategies in the field of CO2 emissions towards reduction.

Commitments of countries participating in the Paris Agreement are planned to be updated every five years, starting in 2022.

The Paris Agreement, unlike the Kyoto Protocol, does not provide for a quota mechanism. There are no sanctions in the Paris Agreement for countries that cannot cope with the implementation of national contributions. The agreement only approves the creation of an incentive mechanism that should encourage states and economic entities for their successful reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Financial support will be provided to developing countries to implement programs to curb global warming. Combined public and private funding developing countries should reach $100 billion by 2020.

Today in the TASS press center representatives of the authorities, the business community and environmental organizations discussed the opportunities and threats that the ratification of the Paris climate agreement could bring to Russia. Round table « Greenhouse effect for the economy: the first year of the Paris Agreement”, held at the office of the news agency, helped to understand what changes await the country's energy balance after the document comes into force. The plan for ratification of the Paris climate agreement, we recall, was approved by the Government of the Russian Federation in early November, thus putting an end to the discussion about whether Russia should take on obligations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The document assumes that by 2020 a long-term strategy for low-carbon development of the country will be adopted and targets for reducing emissions by 2030 will be determined. However, with the advent of the plan, doubts did not disappear, the main of which is why does the oil and gas power need “clean” energy?

01.

Why is it necessary to negotiate?

02.

Can the working group at the UN be trusted?

03.

What happened before the Paris Agreement?

Reference:

The Paris Agreement was adopted during the Climate Conference in Paris on December 12, 2015 in addition to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The document regulates measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and should replace the Kyoto Protocol, the obligations under which expire in 2020. The agreement provides for the obligations of the parties to reduce emissions, the amount of which is determined by each country independently. To date, the document has been ratified by 96 countries. Russia signed the agreement in April 2016, but the political and business communities were hesitant to ratify it due to fears that the transition to a low-carbon development strategy would negatively affect economic growth.

04.

How is the Paris Agreement different from the Kyoto Protocol?

05.

What is the purpose of the Paris Agreement?

06.

Two degrees - is it difficult?

07.

What is the danger of warming by 2-3 degrees?

08.

Why should Russia participate in the Paris Agreement?

09.

What are the disadvantages of the Paris Agreement?

“The expediency of a tax path to a carbon-free future is far from unambiguous,” agrees Fedor Veselov, a leading researcher at the Energy Institute of the National Research University “ graduate School economy". – Often, a carbon tax is seen as a way to increase the competitiveness of low- and non-carbon energy by increasing the cost of electricity from thermal plants. But under the conditions of objectively lower domestic prices for gas and coal, carbon tax rates will not be lower than $50-70 per ton of CO2. Another problem is the mechanism of using tax revenues. Can they be targeted to support technological restructuring in the power industry itself, forming a reverse mechanism to reduce the cost of low- and non-carbon projects, and will they not become a way to subsidize other industries or simple increase budget? The additional tax burden will translate into the price of the final product, including the price of electricity and heat.”

10.

What is happening in Russia in terms of CO2 emissions?

11.

What should be done in Russia to curb harmful emissions?

The second direction is the development of renewable energy.

The third is technology. Analysts talk about the danger of falling behind in the development of technologies that are somehow connected with renewable energy, with the issues of smart grids, smart cities, technologies that predict electricity consumption.

12.

What does the public discussion of climate-related issues give?

Angelina Davydova - Director of the Russian-German Bureau of Environmental Information, science journalist. Since 2008, he has been an observer at working group on climate issues at the UN, is actively involved in educational activities in this area, collaborated with the publications Kommersant, Ecology and Law, The St. Petersburg Times, The Village and others.