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Mahesh

12/11/24 12:03 PM IST

COP 29

In News
  • The 29th edition of the Conference of the Parties (COP) began in Azerbaijan on November 11.
About COP
  • COP is an international climate meeting organised annually by the United Nations (UN). COP is short for Conference of the Parties.
  • ‘Parties’ is a reference to (now) 198 countries that have joined the international treaty called the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
  • ‘Parties’ to the treaty have pledged to take voluntary actions to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic [human-caused] interference with the climate system.”
Kyoto Protocol
  • The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty that placed obligations on the set of rich and industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by assigned amounts.
  • It was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, and came into effect in 2005.
  • The treaty formally expired in 2020 and was replaced by the Paris Agreement as the main international treaty for coordinating global action against climate change.
Paris Agreement
  • Adopted in 2015 at COP21 in Paris, the agreement is aimed to limit rising global average temperature.
  • It is considered a landmark deal as it legally binds (now) 195 nations, for the first time ever, to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.
1.5 degree limit
  • Under the Paris Agreement, the world governments have agreed to keep average global temperature “well below” 2 degree Celsius this century compared to pre-industrial levels.
  • They have also pledged to pursue efforts to limit the rise to 1.5 degree Celsius — an important threshold, crossing which would unleash far more severe climate change impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves and rainfall.
Glasgow Pact
  • Reached at the COP26 summit in Scotland’s Glasgow, the pact called for phase down of coal and phase out of fossil fuel.
  • This was the first time that a UN climate agreement explicitly mentioned coal.
  • The pact also marked the resolution of the deadlock over carbon markets.
Carbon markets
  • Such markets are essentially trading systems in which carbon credits are sold and bought.
  • They allow countries, or industries, to earn carbon credits for the greenhouse gas emission reductions they make in excess of their targets.
  • These carbon credits can be traded to the highest bidder in exchange for money.
  • The buyers of carbon credits can show the emission reductions as their own and use them to meet their reduction targets.
  • One tradable carbon credit is equal to one tonne of carbon dioxide or the equivalent amount of a different greenhouse gas reduced, sequestered or avoided.
  • Once a credit is used to reduce, sequester, or avoid emissions, it becomes an offset and can no longer be tradable.
Greenhouse gases
  • The gases that trap heat in the atmosphere are known as greenhouse gases (GHGs).
  • They allow sunlight to pass through the atmosphere, but obstruct the heat the sunlight brings from leaving.
  • The main source of GHGs is the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, diesel, gasoline or petrol, kerosene, and natural gas.
  • Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are among the most prominent GHGs.
Net-zero
  • Also referred to as carbon-neutrality, net-zero does not mean that a country would reduce its emissions to zero.
  • Rather, it is a state in which a country’s emissions entering the environment are equal to the greenhouse gases being removed from the atmosphere.
  • The removal can be done by creating more carbon sinks such as forests or by implementing futuristic technologies such as carbon dioxide removal (CDR).
  • In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) marked 2050 as the deadline by which the world must reach net zero if it wants to limit global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius.
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
  • The Paris Agreement requires each country to prepare an outline for their efforts to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
  • These commitments are known as NDCs. They are submitted every five years, and successive NDCs are supposed to be more ambitious than previous ones.
National Adaptation Plans (NAPs)
  • The NAP helps countries develop plans to respond to climate change’s present and future impacts.
  • They are aimed to reduce vulnerability to the severe effects of climate change and strengthen adaptive capacity and resilience.
  • NAPs also play an essential role in updating and improving the adaptation elements of the NDCs.
New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG)
  • The NCQG is the new amount that must be mobilised by developed countries every year from 2025 onward to finance climate action in developing countries.
  • It has to be more than the $100 billion that developed countries, collectively, had promised to raise every year from 2020, but had failed to deliver.
  • The NCQG is expected to be finalised at COP29.

Common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR)
  • It is a principle of international law which states that different countries have different capabilities and responsibilities to address cross-border environmental problems such as climate change.
  • One example of the CBDR principle is the 1989 Montreal Protocol, an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer.
  • It gave a 10-year grace period for ‘developing countries’ to implement the control measures.
Loss and damage
  • There is no agreed definition of ‘loss and damage’ in the international climate negotiations, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
  • In broad terms, it refers to the unavoidable social and financial impacts caused by extreme weather events.
  • At COP27, a loss and damage fund was established to provide financial help to countries struck by climate disasters.
  • A year later, at COP28 in Dubai, the fund was officially launched.
Source- Indian Express

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