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The fallacy of net-zero emissions being ambitious Current targets for achieving net-zero carbon emissions fall far short of what is needed to contain climate change and allow the developed countries to evade their fair share of climate action. Meena Raman UN Secretary-General António Guterres, since early this year, has been calling on governments to come forward with significantly more ambitious actions by all parties under the Paris Agreement (PA) in order ‘to stop the climate crisis from becoming a permanent catastrophe’, which requires the limiting of temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. The UNSG has called for 2030 targets from governments consistent with a net-zero pathway and has cited an exponential growth of the global coalition for net-zero emissions as a ‘central objective for the UN this year.’ According to a recent UN press release, ‘despite the current meaningful momentum in tackling the climate crisis – which includes countries representing current 70% of the world economy and 65% of global carbon dioxide emissions having now committed to net zero – the UN chief said this was not enough, with the world still way off target in keeping the global temperature rise to within the 1.5-degree limit of the PA.’ The UNSG’s call has been followed by intensive diplomatic outreach by representatives of the United Kingdom, which will host the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including by the incoming COP 26 President, Alok Sharma, to many capitals, including in the developing world, persuading them to update their climate pledges. On Earth Day, 22 April, the United States, which has rejoined the Paris Agreement, is convening a Leaders Summit on Climate of 40 countries, with US President Joe Biden as the host of the event, which will take place virtually. According to a White House briefing, Biden in his invitation urged leaders to use the summit as an opportunity to outline how their countries also will contribute to stronger climate ambition. The meeting also seeks to ‘address the role of nature-based solutions in achieving net zero by 2050 goals’. These diplomatic efforts have seen responses from some Northern governments and several big corporations, including major fossil fuel companies which have announced net-zero targets. While efforts to goad governments to undertake more climate action are laudable given that current pledges under the Paris Agreement will take the world to 3°C-5°C warming, net-zero emissions by 2050, especially by rich countries and their corporations, will not be enough to save the world from a climate crisis. Such net-zero announcements have drawn much flak from some academics from developing countries and climate justice groups for being unambitious, not going far and even dubious in the case of some.1 They have been viewed as not enough in terms of what should be the fair and equitable effort, especially by rich countries, within a shrinking carbon budget to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. These groups have called for ‘real zero’ and not ‘net zero’, starting first with developed countries, which must also be responsible for the provision of financial support to developing countries to head in that direction. ‘Far from signifying climate ambition, the phrase “net zero” is being used by a majority of polluting governments and corporations to orchestrate escape clauses so as to evade responsibility, shift burdens, disguise climate inaction, and in some cases even to scale up fossil fuel extraction, burning and emissions. The term is used to greenwash business-as-usual or even business-more-than-usual. At the core of these pledges are small and distant targets that require no action for decades, and promises of technologies that are unlikely ever to work at scale, and which are likely to cause huge harm if they come to pass,’ say these climate justice groups. Much of these net-zero pledges are not grounded in deep decarbonisation and rely heavily on ‘nature-based solutions’ (NbS) as sinks to sequester carbon emissions. Much of them rely on carbon markets to deliver carbon offsets mainly in developing countries. What offsetting means is not a reduction of emissions domestically but paying developing countries to do the emissions reductions in their countries as it is seen as being more ‘cost-effective’, and buying the carbon credits to offset the emissions generated in the developed world. With or without carbon offsetting, such pledges create a huge demand for sinks mainly located in the forests, wetlands and grasslands in the developing countries. There is no known published research yet that adds up the quantities of carbon removal that make up the net-zero pledges of these countries and corporations. What seems clear though is that the quantity of the sinks needed would exceed the sequestration capacity of the planet by several-fold. This will have negative implications for developing countries, including for conflicts over land use, local communities and indigenous peoples whose lands and forests are being sought to solve the emissions problem of the rich nations. Climate justice groups have referred to this as ‘carbon colonialism’. Opposition to an equitable approach in emissions reductions Limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C requires the sharing of the remaining carbon budget in an equitable manner. For a 50% probability of keeping warming below the limit, the carbon budget remaining is 480 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2eq).2 At the current rate of emissions of 42 GtCO2eq per year, the budget would be exhausted in about 12 years (see following article). With a shrinking carbon budget, the right approach ought to be one where the developed world takes the lead in much deeper cuts in their emissions based on a fair-shares approach which takes into account their historical and current cumulative emissions, including on a per capita basis. In the run-up to the adoption of the Paris Agreement, there were proposals from some developing countries (viz., India, Bolivia and Ethiopia) on the need for equitable access to atmospheric space in determining how the remaining carbon budget within a certain temperature rise threshold is to be shared on a per capita basis, taking into account historical responsibilities between developed and developing countries and their respective capabilities. Such equity-based proposals were not followed up on due to tremendous resistance from developed countries, especially from the US, on the grounds that no international agreement can dictate a top-down approach to emissions reductions for countries. In fact, this fight for a top-down approach began well before the run-up to Paris. In the UNFCCC negotiations between 2007-10, the US was even opposed to any reference to a top-down aggregate reduction figure based on what science requires for developed countries, from which the developed-country national commitments would have to be added up to meet the aggregate reduction figure.3 This top-down aggregate system was what was agreed to in the negotiations for the second commitment period (for developed-country targets from 2013-20) of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) for developed countries which were parties to the Protocol. However, the US was not a party to the KP but was a party to the Convention, and it did not want any reference to the aggregate reduction figure in any decision under the UNFCCC.
In Paris in 2015, the only consensus possible in order to accommodate mainly the US was through the acceptance of a bottom-up approach, which paved the way for ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDCs) under which each country would pledge what it can do voluntarily without any methodology to assess if such reductions are consistent with equity or fairness. In fact, analysis by serious academics and progressive civil society groups has pointed out that rich countries are not doing enough at all and are very far away from what is needed to limit temperature rise. For instance, one recent analysis ‘rooted in the principle of equal per capita access to atmospheric commons’ by Dr. Jason Hickel from the University of London, reported in The Lancet,4 pointed out that ‘As of 2015, the USA was responsible for 40% of excess global CO2 emissions. The European Union (EU-28) was responsible for 29%. The G8 nations (the USA, EU-28, Russia, Japan, and Canada) were together responsible for 85%. Countries classified by the UNFCCC as Annex I nations (i.e, most industrialised countries) were responsible for 90% of excess emissions. The Global North was responsible for 92%. By contrast, most countries in the Global South were within their boundary fair shares, including India and China (although China will overshoot soon).’ The Third World Network also compiled a table of what emission reductions of selected developed countries ought to be from a fair-shares perspective according to civil society groups (see box). The table shows the actual effort needed from developed countries in terms of emissions reductions, including the level of finance that they should be contributing to developing countries as part of their fair shares. Instead of focusing on what the emission reductions ought to be from a fair-shares perspective in order to keep within the remaining carbon budget in an equitable way, the net-zero mantra allows developed countries to get away with targets which amount to doing too little too late, and passes on the responsibility to developing countries to do the heavy lifting, without commensurate finance and technology transfer. If COP 26 is to be a success, its outcomes must reflect equity between developed and developing countries and must not undermine the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDRRC) which underpins the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Equity between countries as underlined by the CBDRRC principle is the foundation of the UNFCCC, reflecting the historical responsibilities of developed countries for much of the greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution, and the different capacities between the North and the South. In the negotiations on the PA, how equity and CBDRRC would be reflected in the new agreement was hugely contested along North-South lines, with the US – led by John Kerry, the climate envoy under the Obama administration then (and now under Biden) – leading the charge in an effort at obliterating the principle and blurring the differentiation between developed and developing countries. This effort was thwarted in Paris by a strong group of Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC), which led to the PA’s Article 2.2. However, attempts at undermining equity and CBDRRC in the implementation of the PA obligations have not stopped, as exemplified by the push towards net zero by 2050. The PA does call for a balance between human emissions and removal by sinks by 2050, but this is to be on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty. This is a global aspiration and not a country-wise aim. It cannot be country-wise, as this would lead to inequity. The success of COP 26 is predicated by mainstream media on ‘major emitters’ updating and revising their climate targets to more ambitious levels, including in promising net-zero targets. Setting such expectations for the success of the COP is not only unrealistic but also, with regard to the claims that the net-zero targets are ambitious, misleading. Such net-zero targets for developed countries are neither ambitious nor equitable from the perspective of developing countries. Instead of respecting equity and the CBDRRC principle, such calls for common action would lead to the sharing of responsibilities without differentiating between developed and developing countries and their different capabilities. Instead of CBDRRC, they promote the notion of ‘common and shared responsibilities,’ thus undermining equity between the rich and poor, North and South. While it is well acknowledged that all countries have to do more in terms of improving their NDCs so as to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C, expecting similar actions between developed and developing countries is not only grossly inequitable but also misleading as it will not solve the climate crisis. Following postponement of COP 26 from last year due to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, governments especially in the developing world are facing huge challenges dealing with the triple crises of health, economic recovery and climate change. The poorer economies, in particular, are having to borrow more money and getting further indebted as they try to keep their health systems intact and as they face growing poverty and unemployment caused by the effects of the pandemic on their economies. For many rich economies, adequate vaccine access to tackle the pandemic has been secured, but this is not the case for most of the world’s poor countries, which are still struggling to get the needed supply. The Western world is also opposing proposals by developing countries to waive intellectual property rules in order to remove barriers to the development, production and approval of vaccines, therapeutics and other medical technologies necessary to combat the pandemic, so that more manufacturers, especially from developing countries, may independently contribute to the global supply.5 The fallacy of net zero needs to be exposed for what it is. It is no panacea in solving the climate crisis. The rich North cannot run away from what they must do today, which is to go to real zero and to assist developing countries to do their fair shares, through the provision of finance and technology transfer, as well as to build their capacities so that they do not repeat the mistakes of the North. Net zero is indeed a mirage to delay further action; the sooner we realise this, the better, for the sake of the planet and the poor. Meena Raman is Head of Programmes at the Third World Network and Coordinator of TWN’s Climate Change Programme. Notes 2 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Special Report on 1.5°C 3 Martin Khor and Meenakshi Raman, A Clash of Climate Change Paradigms, 2020, Third World Network 4 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30196-0/fulltext 5 https://www.twn.my/title2/intellectual_property/trips_waiver_proposal.htm *Third World Resurgence No. 347, 2021, pp 7-10 |
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