1 November, 2011

Bridging the Emissions Gap

Authors

Kornelis Blok, William Hare, Niklas Höhne, Mikiko Kainuma, Jiang Kejun, David S. Lee, Joeri Rogelj, P.R. Shukla

Nearly 20 years after governments established the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and 14 years following the agreement of the Kyoto Protocol, nations gather in the South African coastal city of Durban to resume the crucial climate negotiations.

Keeping average global temperature rise below 2°C has become the focus of international efforts crystallised first in Copenhagen in 2009, and reaffirmed in Cancún last year.

This report outlines how far the current commitments and pledges of developed and developing nations can take the world in terms of achieving the 2°C limit or less, and the gap that remains between ambition and reality. The analysis presented in “Bridging the Emissions Gap” has involved an unprecedented effort of climate modelling centres world-wide.

The first ever United Nations Environment Program report has a number of contributions from Climate Analytics' staff and from our Climate Action Tracker project.

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