15 March, 2015

Analysis of fair mitigation contribution for South Africa

Authors

Marcia Rocha, Alain Coimbra, Louise Jeffery, Johannes Gütschow, Michiel Schaeffer, and Bill Hare

In this short report, we aim to outline the implications of different effort-sharing criteria and metrics on emission reduction efforts for South Africa in the post-2015 agreement.

We defined a set of scenarios considering different sets of criteria (amongst historical responsibility, potential to mitigate, capacity) and their proxy metrics (the various possible numerical expressions for each of these criteria) and estimated emissions allowances for South Africa.

For a global 2°C pathway, the resulting effort-sharing ranges suggest for South-Africa a 2016-2050 cumulative carbon budgets of around 7.6-13.7 GtCO2 - for a scenario with a 50% chance of staying below 2°C - and 6.7-13 GtCO2 - for a scenario of 66% chance of staying below 2°C - and emissions being on a downward trajectory by the early 2020s (emissions excl. LULUCF).

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