Expert stresses developed countries' responsibilities on climate

An expert has called for intensified support from developed countries to the decarbonization process in emerging economies, considering the comparatively high costs for them to control carbon emissions and their weak capacity in that regard.

He made the remarks on Tuesday when the 2022 Carbon Dioxide Emission Accounts of Global Emerging Economies were published in Beijing.

Compared with developed states, emerging economies are expected to have greater cost-effective potential in reducing carbon emissions in the future. Due to high costs, however, it's hard for them to significantly reduce emissions by themselves, according to Guan Dabo, a professor from the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University.

The report was jointly published by the department, the university's Institute for Carbon Neutrality, as well as the Administrative Center for China's Agenda 21. Guan was the report's lead author.

To hold the increase in the global average temperature this century to well below 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels while leaving emerging economies enough space for further growth in emissions, the developed nations need to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 7.2 percent per year on average, he said.

Limiting global warming to 1.5 C would require rapid and far-reaching changes in all aspects of society according to a 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that assesses the science related to climate change.

The report highlights a series of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 C. By the end of this century, for example, the global sea level rise would be 10 centimeters lower with global warming of 1.5 C compared with 2 C.

The Paris Agreement on climate change, which was reached in 2015, aims to keep the global temperature rise this century below a 2 C increase from preindustrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 C.

Guan, however, pointed out a huge gap between the goal and developed countries' real performances. From 2010 to 2018, the European Union and the United States, for instance, saw their carbon emissions decrease by 1.4 percent and 0.9 percent respectively.

In accordance with the principal of common but differentiated responsibilities, which is included in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris treaty, the EU, the US and the other developed economies should beef up financial and technical supports for the emerging economies, Guan said.

They should also update their emission reduction targets so they can realize negative emissions as soon as possible, he stressed.