Keeping warming below 2C: Quantifying and evaluating INDCs
Update, 1 Dec 2015: Presentations are available now at the bottom of this page.
Countries agreed to keeping warming below 2C warming or even at 1.5C. This special event by the Australian-German Climate & Energy College at the COP21 negotiations in Paris will present and discuss our INDC Factsheets, likely the world's most comprehensive quantification of the post-2020 targets that countries announced before Paris. In addition, we present different allocation approaches, i.e. what the countries' post-2020 targets should be, if the collective goal is to keep warming to below 2C. Together with other academic partners, the College developed the online resources www.mitigation-contributions.org which highlights those targets for G20 countries. Furthermore, the UNFCCC Synthesis Report and this year's UNEP GAP report will be discussed. Finally, given that there is no way around zero carbon emissions in the long term, if warming shall be halted, this special event discusses the possibilities and avenues for the Paris agreement to include an efficient ratcheting up mechanism of strenghtening national targets towards a longer-term goal of zero carbon emissions.
See listing in programm of German Pavilion here
Further Information
Side Event Flyer (pls share)
Meinshausen Presentation Slides (18 MB) Jeffery Presentation Slides (3 MB) Rogelj Presentation Slides (3 MB)
A/Prof Malte Meinshausen is Deputy Academic Convenor of the College at The University of Melbourne since 2012 and is affiliated with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany. He holds a PhD in "Climate Science & Policy", a Diploma in "Environmental Sciences" from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and an MSc in "Environmental Change and Management" from the University of Oxford, UK. Before joining the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in 2006, he was a Post-Doc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. He has been a contributing author to various chapters in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4). Until May 2011, he was leading the PRIMAP ("Potsdam Real-Time Integrated Model for probabilistic Assessment of emission Path") research group at PIK before relocating to Melbourne. Since 2005, he is a scientific advisor to the German Environmental Ministry related to international climate change negotiations under the UNFCCC. Since 2014, he investigates methods to derive future climate targets for Australia in the context of a Future Fellow ARC project.
Dr. Louise Jeffery is a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany where she leads the PRIMAP emissions module group. At PIK, Louise examines the pledges, rules, and agreements of the UN climate change negotiations, providing critique and assessment of their effectiveness. Her published work includes analysis of how mitigation burdens can be shared fairly among countries and assessments of the sufficiency of current climate action plans. Currently she is focussing on how policies and pledges in two major sectors - land-use and international aviation and shipping – contribute to meeting the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.
Louise holds a Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Sciences from the University of Michigan, where she explored the links between landscape development and long-term climate change in the Andes. Prior to that she studied natural sciences at the University of Cambridge.
Farhana Yamin is a leading international environmental lawyer and climate change and development policy expert. She has provided legal and policy advice to many different countries and constituencies over the last 20 years working as an adviser to developing countries especially the Alliance of Small Island States and least developed countries.
She has worked with the Children's Investment Fund Foundation from 2009 to 2012 leading on work relating to development of low emissions development strategies in developing countries and the development of progressive coalitions in the international negotiations. She was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex from 2003 to 2009 and published numerous books and articles on the climate/development nexus. She was Director of the Climate Change and Energy Programme of the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development from 1992 to 2002. She has been a Lead Author for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for three assessment reports and was Director of the Basic Project which brought together experts and government representatives from Brazil, South Africa, India and China for the very first time in 2004 to 2008 to discuss climate policy issues.
Ms Yamin has worked as a consultant to the European Commission from 1998-2002 providing advice on the EU Emissions Trading Directive. She was Special Adviser to Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for Climate Action for 2012-2013, on issues relating to the international negotiations. She is a visiting professor at University College London, teaching international environmental law and climate change policy and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.
Joeri Rogelj is Director of Research and Lecturer in Climate Change and the Environment at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. He explores how societies can transform towards more sustainable futures. His research activities cross many disciplinary boundaries, connecting Earth system sciences to the study of societal change and policy.
He has published on the potential effectiveness of international climate agreements including the Copenhagen Accord and the Paris Agreement, carbon budgets, the urgency of climate mitigation action, global net zero emission targets, the interaction between climate and sustainable development, emission pathways that limit global warming to 1.5°C and 2°C, and climate justice.
Dr. Rogelj has contributed to several major scientific climate change assessments informing the international climate negotiations under the UNFCCC. He is a long-serving lead author on the annual Emissions Gap Reports by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). He contributed to the physical science and climate change mitigation assessment of Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), served as a Coordinating Lead Author on mitigation pathways for the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C of Global Warming, and is currently a Lead Author for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment. He continues to follow the UNFCCC climate negotiations as a scientific advisor and was in 2019 the youngest member serving on the UN Secretary-General's Climate Science Advisory Group.
He received the award for outstanding research for his Master's thesis from the Flanders Biomedical Society. In 2011, he received the Peccei Award for outstanding research performed during the IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program, and in 2014 he received the ETH Medal for his outstanding doctoral dissertation. Further information about Dr. Rogelj, together with a selected list of publications, can be found at https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/j.rogelj.