21 September, 2021

The value of climate cooperation

Authors

Emma Williams, David Steven, Nick Mabey, Ronan Palmer, Bill Hare and Carl-Friedrich Schleussner

The picture on climate change is bleak. But 30 years of international climate cooperation have had a significant impact. This has included an extraordinary global effort to clarify the science, global agreement of a stabilisation target, an international treaty basis for mitigation and adaptation action, and a wide array of partnerships that have driven up ambition and developed technical solutions.

Without this cooperation, the world would already face even more dangerous and irreversible levels of climate change – and would have none of the tools we need to effect a low-carbon transition.

We present three scenarios:

Into the Abyss – where there has been no international action on climate change. In this scenario, the world would already be at or over the 1.5°C threshold and would be committed to an estimated 4.4°C of warming and >30% loss of global GDP by 2100.
Base Camp – which describes our current trajectory, with climate cooperation cutting our trajectory to an estimated 2.7°C of warming by the end of this century (range: 2.1°C – 3.5°C).
Ascend the Summit – which assumes the world takes immediate and decisive action to shift our trajectory down towards 1.5°C, with at least $36.4 trillion of averted costs through a transformation that relies on more equal societies, a stronger social contract, and greater empowerment of women.

Throughout its history, international climate cooperation may often have failed to deliver as anticipated, but each crisis in the negotiations has encouraged the emergence of more networked and inclusive models of multilateralism. The past thirty years have seen unprecedented cooperation to build the scientific evidence, agree a global goal, design governance systems that can ratchet up ambition in line with the science, and drive the technological advances we now need to deploy at scale. Progress to date, though, has been foundational rather than transformational.

The gap between the Into the Abyss and Base Camp scenarios can be measured in millions of lives and trillions of dollars but impacts and costs at Base Camp remain catastrophically high.

What has been achieved is keeping the path to 1.5°C open, if only barely, and providing the frameworks and tools that make it still just possible to Ascend the Summit within the next 30 years. The 2021 floods in Germany and China, wildfires across Siberia and the Mediterranean, and unprecedented North American ‘heat dome’ show climate change hitting harder and earlier than previously anticipated, and scientists are painting an increasingly dark picture of the future. But at the same time, solutions have rapidly become cheaper and more easily brought to scale. We are now poised at the threshold of what has to be a radical transformation of the global economy, based on these and other emerging solutions.

We don’t know what will happen at the Glasgow Conference of the Parties (COP26).

But whatever happens, it will mark the start of the next cycle of international climate politics – a cycle where:

We’re no longer asking politicians to start a journey, but to up ambition and stay the course.
New commitments are only as good as the integrity with which they’re implemented.
Climate change could drive geopolitical tensions or stimulate multilateral innovation.
The action is no longer in formal institutions, but in the networks that spring up between them.

The path to 1.5°C is most likely to stay open if we:

Put people at the heart of the transition to net zero, by changing the narrative to one of solutions, success, and inevitability, actively engaging across national, generational, and political divides, and making sure the global low carbon shift and ancillary race to resilience has more winners than losers.
Make net zero universal, credible, and inevitable, with binding targets that cover all emissions, an accelerated shift in the legal, regulatory, and policy landscape, and better carbon pricing and markets.
Accelerate delivery in the 2020s to keep 1.5°C within reach, by delivering on climate finance commitments, finishing the job on shifts already underway, shaping markets to accelerate uptake of low carbon technologies, filling gaps, and regulating new technology.
Organise global systems for a low carbon age, bringing climate institutions together to promote leadership, standards, and accountability, ensuring that climate targets and policies are driven by a full understanding of climate risk and not just mid-range scenarios, making climate core business for every international institution, building solidarity between people and the planet, and investing in resilience and adaptation to a climate changed world.

Publications

Climate Action Tracker: 2024 warming projection update

Despite an escalating climate crisis marked by unprecedented wildfires, storms, floods, and droughts, the Climate Action Tracker annual global temperature update shows global warming projections for 2100 are flatlining, with no improvement since 2021. The aggregate effect of current policies set the world on a path toward 2.7°C of warming.

Decarbonising light-duty vehicle road transport

The Climate Action Tracker provides updated 1.5ºC compatible benchmarks for the transport sector for the world as a whole and for seven individual countries; the US, EU, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia.

Emissions Gap Report 2024: No more hot air … please!

The 2024 edition of UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report shows how much higher nations must aim. To get on a least-cost pathway for 1.5°C, emissions must fall 42 per cent by 2030, compared to 2019 levels. G20 nations, particularly the largest-emitting members, would need to do the heavy lifting.

The role of northern forests in limiting warming to 1.5°C

Northern forests are critical in the race to net zero CO₂ by mid-century. Protecting and restoring these forests, alongside steep and rapid reductions in fossil fuel emissions, is essential both to mitigating emissions and to supporting forest ecosystem services and biodiversity.

Methodology underpinning the State of Climate Action series: 2024 update

This technical note describes the State of Climate Action series’ methodology for identifying sectors that must transform, translating these transformations into global mitigation targets primarily for 2030, 2035 and 2050 and selecting indicators with datasets to monitor annual change. It also outlines the report’s approach for assessing progress made toward near-term targets and comparing trends over time.

LNG shipbuilding industry heading to huge oversupply

The LNG shipbuilding industry appears to be doubling down on building new carriers, ignoring the global shift to a low carbon economy and putting itself into an even worse oversupply situation than a year ago, we find in our updated report.

Setting 1.5°C compatible wind and solar targets

Based on global energy system modelling sense-checked against key national studies, this report presents new analysis on what a 1.5°C-aligned rollout of wind and solar could look like for key countries. It aims to inform target setting for 2030, 2035 and beyond in third generation NDCs.

Technical guide for the development of long-term low emission development strategies in Africa

This technical guide proposes concrete steps and actions to help African countries develop strong, high-performing Long-Term Low Emission and Climate Resilient Development Strategies that chart a low-emission development path, build resilience, encourage innovation, and create new opportunities for green growth.

Evaluating the near and long-term role of carbon dioxide removal in meeting global climate objectives

For 1.5°C pathways with limited overshoot, most of the mitigation between now and 2030 should come from emissions reductions (70%), with reductions from cutting non-CO2 emissions (20%) and land-based carbon dioxide removals such as afforestation and preventing deforestation (10%) making up the remainder.

Article 6.4 progress update: work of the Supervisory Body on the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism

The Article 6.4 mechanism, now known as the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism, allows countries to trade reductions in carbon emissions in a manner that goes beyond zero-sum offsetting, to achieve their commitments under the Paris Agreement. This briefing aims to update Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries on the standards and procedures that have been adopted by the supervising body (Article 6.4) to inform the design of projects.

What does a just transition look like for Caribbean Small Island Developing States?

This briefing aims to provide some preliminary information on what just transition encompasses in the context of Caribbean Small Island Developing States.

What good looks like: G7 climate policy 2024 update

This brief outlines seven key policy recommendations for this June’s G7 summit that, if adopted, would demonstrate the ambition and leadership needed to keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit in sight.

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Decarbonisation targets and 1.5℃ pathways

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