The potential of cooperative climate initiatives is very significant, since according to a recent study by the NewClimate Institute, even just a few of these initiatives could help close the current gap between what is now needed to put the world on a pathway towards a global average temperature rise of 2°C, if fully implemented and scaled. Current national climate action plans under the Paris Agreement put the world on a path to more than 3°C.
A workshop of data experts in Madrid on the issue concluded with the adoption of a collective statement by the climate data community, which was presented to the Climate Champion for Chile, Gonzalo Muñoz, and Luis Alfonso de Alba, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the 2019 Climate Action Summit.
“As a community, our aim is to now create a common framework for tracking progress that looks at targets, ambition, outputs and outcomes to align with the Paris Agreement,” the statement reads.
“For this purpose, we will collaborate to produce a finalized framework to track and identify indicators of progress for credible climate actions. This will include the presentation of initial metrics, which will be reflected on the Global Climate Action portal by COP26.”
The data community working on supporting climate action comprises 30+ organizations - including Yale and Oxford universities, The Climate Group, CDP and UN Environment (UNEP).
Data is already being collected by some of these groups in the UN Climate Change’s GCA portal, which is a powerful tool to stimulate climate action transparency and to give recognition.
For the period 2020 to 2023, the main objective is to develop quantifiable metrics that will guide the Global Stocktake mechanism and help to raise national climate ambition. These would include emissions reductions, carbon price, 1.5/2°C alignment and net zero metrics. The framework will be a set of principles governing the process around how these metrics are collected, which is important to provide an even playing field when mapping progress data from the various sources.
The aim is that by 2023, a rigorous and full report should be produced that tracks the mitigation potential of the expanded landscape of cooperative initiatives and demonstrates the achievement of cooperative initiatives since the conclusion of the Paris Agreement.
