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It’s clear Russia’s climate target fails even to match China's in ambition
(Corrects the numbers for Russia’s emissions in the 13th and 16th paragraphs)
At the U.N. climate negotiations this week, Russia promised a “long-term objective” of cutting its emissions 25 percent by 2030.
“As far as the commitment to a new agreement is concerned, the long-term objective in Russia is to reach 75 percent of 1990 levels by 2030,” said Alexander Bedritskiy, advisor to the president and special envoy for climate change, addressing the conference.
“A final figure will depend on economic circumstances and decisions by major economies,” he said.
That may sound impressive but in fact Russia is out of step with other major economies in its pledge for climate action beyond 2020, under a new climate agreement expected in Paris at the end of next year.
Russia, the world’s fourth biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, and hardly a developing country, is offering even less ambition than China, contradicting even its own view that major emerging countries such as China should start to offer comparable targets to industrialised nations, such as Russia.
Energy and environment ministers are presently meeting in Lima, Peru, where Russia made its announcement, to try and agree on the scope of pledges under a Paris agreement.
The tone of the Lima conference, even more so than at previous climate conferences, has been that the world has very limited time to cut greenhouse gas emissions and action is urgent.
In that spirit, several major economies have already come forward in recent months with indicative targets for emissions cuts.
The United States said last month that it would cut its emissions by 26-28 percent by 2025, compared with 2005 levels.
The EU said it would cut its emissions by 40 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.
Even China, a developing country with a lower per capita income, said its emissions would stop rising by 2030, and that it would aim to do that at an earlier date.
Russia, however, has expressed its target slightly differently to other countries. It is saying that it will cut emissions by 25 percent compared with 1990 levels, which sounds roughly in line with the United States.
The problem is that the country’s emissions in 2012 had already fallen by 50 percent or 32 percent compared with 1990 levels, depending whether you include the effect of forests, as a result of industrial collapse in the wake of its transition away from communism.
That means, far from cutting emissions, that Russia, with an economy founded largely on fossil fuel resources, is planning a substantial emissions increase, while the United States and the EU are planning sharp cuts.
That is an unhelpful position, given the severity of climate change, a problem that cannot be slowed and reversed quickly because the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, remains in the atmosphere for centuries and even millennia.
In 2012, Russia’s emissions were 1,755 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, taking into account emissions captured by forests, and 2,297 million tonnes excluding forestry. In 1990, Russia’s emissions were 3,532 million tonnes including forestry, and 3,368 million tonnes excluding forestry.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said earlier this year that by 2030 global emissions would have to fall below present levels for the world to have a cost-effective chance of staying within an internationally agreed limit of no more than 2 degrees Celsius warming.
“Delaying additional mitigation to 2030 will substantially increase the challenges … and higher long-term economic impacts,” the IPCC Synthesis Report said.
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