Despite being two years behind schedule due to the pandemic, talks between governments aimed at brokering a new global pact to protect nature made little concrete progress in the past two weeks, with green groups urging political leaders to wade in. About 195 countries are set to finalize an accord to stem human damage to plants, animals and ecosystems similar to the Paris climate agreement at a UN summit, known as COP15, due to be held in the third quarter of this year in Kunming, China. Postponed several times due to the difficulties of meeting face to face during the coronavirus pandemic, the first in-person talks in two years on the agreement and ways to put it into practice took place in Geneva from March 13-29.
There was, however, strong support for a central pillar of the planned nature pact: to conserve at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030, said Brian O’Donnell, director of the US-based Campaign for Nature. A coalition of more than 80 countries including G7 wealthy governments have already promised to support the goal. Global annual spending to protect and restore nature on land needs to triple this decade to about $350bn by 2030,. This month, international green groups called on the world’s richest nations to commit at least $60bn a year to protect and restore biodiversity in developing countries.
Financing for those nations, to help them meet the goals of a nature deal, has long been a sticking point for the talks and this again proved to be the case in Geneva. Some developing countries have previously shied away from backing key elements of the nature pact as a way of extracting more money from richer nations, many of whom rely on the cheap commodities those poorer states supply. Some political leaders have also yet to grasp the economic benefits of conservation, with many still betting on exploitation of natural resources to lift people out of poverty especially after the Covid-19 crisis.
Now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) further updated the Climate Change Indicators Dashboard an international statistical initiative to address the growing need for data in macroeconomic and financial policy analysis related to climate change. Two new indicators have been introduced CO2 emissions and CO2 emissions intensities. CO2 emissions multipliers previously published in the CID as CO2 emissions per unit of output, has been updated to 2018, with the number of industries covered increasing from 36 to 45, and the number of countries increasing from 64 to 66.
The quarterly air emission accounts have been updated to 2021 Q3, with a breakdown by gas type; CO2 emissions embodied in international trade have been updated to 2018. CO2 emissions embodied in gross fixed capital formation financed by direct investment have been updated to 2018. CO2 emissions in output and cross-border trade by firm ownership have been updated to 2016. National Mitigation Targets have been updated based on the revised Nationally Determined Contributions submitted by countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). National Greenhouse Gas Inventories have been updated to include disaggregated information for 6 sectors and 14 sub-sectors, and estimates for the years 1990-2020. Trade in Environmental Goods and in Low Carbon Technology Products have been updated with new and revised data through 2020, and selected bilateral data through 2021.
