Carbon dioxide pollution needs to be reduced tenfold to meet climate emergencies

UN Climate Change meeting to be held in Glasgow, UK in November

In the year 2020, there was a significant reduction in pollution due to the closure of industrial activity due to covid

LONDON: A global reduction in carbon dioxide is needed to meet the goal of the Paris Agreement to combat climate change, despite the fact that 64 countries have reduced fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions between 2016 and 2019.

The University of East Anglia in the UK (UAE), Stanford University in the US and the Global Carbon Project studied the progress made in controlling fossil fuel carbon dioxide pollution since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015.

Its findings, published in Nature Climate Change, show that more ambitious action is needed ahead of the UK's Glasgow UN Climate Meeting in November.

Corinne Le Quere, a professor at the Royal Society in the UAE, said the Paris Agreement has borne fruit in countries' efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but the measures have not yet been taken on a large scale and many countries still continue to pollute.

Le Quier, who led the study, said carbon dioxide pollution had decreased in response to the Covid-19 and that the international community needed to take more large-scale action to address climate change.

The researchers noted that the 0.16 billion tonne reduction in carbon dioxide emissions on an annual basis is barely ten per cent of the one to two billion tonne pollution and that global efforts to tackle climate change need to be respected. He explained that 64 countries reduced carbon dioxide pollution between 2016 and 2019 and 150 countries increased it.

According to the study, between 2016 and 2015, global carbon dioxide pollution increased by 0.21 billion tonnes compared to 2011-2015. Researchers note that measures taken to curb Covid-19 in 2020 reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 2.6 billion tonnes and were less than seven percent from 2019 levels.

He explains that pollution control due to Kovid-19 could not continue in 2020, as the world relies heavily on fossil fuels. According to researchers, this type of control policy is not a sustainable or desirable solution to the climate crisis.

They note that pollution of one to two billion tons of carbon dioxide was reduced during the year 2020 and that such a reduction was necessary to prevent the world from overheating and keeping its temperature within the range of 1.5 degrees Celsius above 2 degrees Celsius, which is the ambit of the UN Paris Agreement. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the world has warmed by more than one degree Celsius due to increased pollution caused by human activities, the researchers said.