Why the Emissions Gap Report 2022 has raised alarm on climate action
The Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window - Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies was released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Programme.
The report focused on the need for countries to take significant steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2022 that will begin on November 6 in Egypt.
The Paris Agreement, adopted by 196 countries in 2015 at COP 21, was aimed at limiting global warming and maintaining the average global temperature rise, ideally, to below 1.5°C.According to the 2022 report, the national pledges taken by countries since last year only make a "Negligible difference" to predicted 2030 emissions.
In a first, New Zealand recently planned to tax agricultural emissions, which includes those from livestock burps and waste, in an attempt to "Transition to a low emissions future" and fulfil its promise "To price agriculture emissions from 2025," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stated on October 11.
Mostly, biogenic methane and nitrous oxide are responsible for about half of New Zealand's gross emissions, hence a pricing mechanism will be introduced to achieve the emissions reduction target by 2050.
What are livestock emissions? Emissions from livestock mainly include carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane among others.
At COP 26 last year, China, as one of the biggest emitters of methane, entered a bilateral agreement with the US for reducing methane emissions.