Coinciding with the global climate change discussions currently taking place in Bangkok, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on Friday released an offering to governments for discussion, entitled ‘Sharing the effort under a global carbon budget’, and called for strict implementation of a global carbon budget between now and 2050.

The report was based on research and analysis done by consultancy Ecofys, and outlined that the amount of “tolerable global emissions” (to keep average temperature rise below 2 ºC) between the years 1990 and 2100 was about 1 600 Gt of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent.

Thus, because already 40% of the budget has been ‘used up’ since 1990, from 2009 to the end of the century, there was said to be leeway to emit only 870Gt of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, if global temperature rise was to be kept to 2 ºC. This was the level advised by scientists, which could steer the world away from what was being termed ‘runaway, catastrophic climate change’.

“Until today, and because mankind has already increased its global emissions substantively since 1990, the remaining net cumulative budget between 2009 and 2100 is limited to 870Gt of CO2 equivalent. This translates to an allowable global yearly emission average for the next 91 years of no more than 9,5Gt CO2 equivalent. Or about 20% of today’s yearly net global emissions,” said the report.

Ecofys further stated that in order to be consistent with the 2 ºC limit, for the report, it was assumed that global GHG emissions would have to be reduced by 30% compared with 1990 levels by 2030.

By 2050, global emissions, excluding those from land-use change and forestry (LUCF), would need to be reduced by 80% compared with 1990 emission levels.

The report assumed that emissions from LUCF would remain constant at about 4Gt until 2010, and decline to zero by between 2010 and 2020, after which, LUCF would become a stable net sink, or absorber, of emissions. By 2030, LUCF would be absorb some 4Gt of CO2 equivalent.

For South Africa, under the scenario tabled by the report, the country would need to reduce its GHG emissions to below 1990 levels by 2030. Analysis showed that “even under the most lenient scenario, South Africa must stabilise its emissions now”, highlighted WWF South Africa (SA) trade and investment adviser Peet du Plooy.

The longer South Africa continued to increase its emissions, the sharper the reductions would need to be after 2020. “We are simply deferring the bill,” reiterated Du Plooy.

In the report, the consultancy defined the carbon budget, and then divided the available emission rights among countries according to different methodologies. These were: the ‘greenhouse development rights’; the ‘contraction and convergence’ methodology; and the ‘common but differentiated convergence’ model.

WWF SA explained that a single global carbon budget was beneficial as it avoided ‘double counting’ of emissions reductions. This could take place when an industrialised country paid for an emission reduction project in the developing world, and those reductions were counted as reductions by both parties.

“A good outcome at the international climate change negotiations scheduled for December in Copenhagen, would be an agreement among parties that there is a need for a common carbon budget,” said WWF SA climate change programme manager Richard Worthington.

He added that a responsibility and capability index of that shared budget would need to follow.

To download a copy of this report, click on the download link to the top left of this article.