Mitigation

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.

Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850. In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years.[1] Furthermore, according to the World Bank’s “Turn Down the Heat” Report, the world is on track to a 4 degree C warmer world, marked by extreme heat-waves and life-threatening sea level rise. Adverse effects of this warming will have a disproportionate impact on the world’s poorest regions and are likely to undermine development efforts and goals.[2]

Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Under the Convention, all Parties have agreed to formulate and implement national and regional programs containing measures to mitigate climate change by addressing emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases.

Additionally, all developed countries have committed or pledged to undertake quantified obligations or targets to reduce or limit their greenhouse gases, while developing countries have pledged to implement specific Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions. In December 2010 at COP 16, Parties decided to limit average global temperature warming to below 1.5 or 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels and to revisit this goal, based on new scientific information.

The AILAC countries are contributing and will continue to contribute to the global mitigation of greenhouse gases, through their nationally appropriate mitigation actions during the pre-2020 period. They are also currently preparing their nationally determined contributions that will form part of the legal agreement that will be decided in 2015, enter into force in 2020. This website contains information that is relevant to the issue of mitigation with a particular focus on the UNFCCC process.

[1] IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

[2] World Bank. 2012. Turn down the heat : why a 4°C warmer world must be avoided. Washington DC : World Bank.

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