Emerging Emitters and Global Carbon Mitigation Efforts
International efforts to avoid dangerous climate change have historically focused on reducing energy-related carbon-di-oxide (CO2) emissions from countries with the largest economies, including the EU and U.S., and/or the largest populations, such...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/937271623851182460/Emerging-Emitters-and-Global-Carbon-Mitigation-Efforts http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35845 |
| Summary: | International efforts to avoid dangerous
climate change have historically focused on reducing
energy-related carbon-di-oxide (CO2) emissions from
countries with the largest economies, including the EU and
U.S., and/or the largest populations, such as, China and
India. However, in recent years, emissions have surged among
a different, much less-examined group of countries, raising
the issue of how to address a next generation of
high-emitting economies that need strong growth to reduce
relatively high levels of poverty. They are also among the
countries most at risk from the adverse impacts of climate
change. Compounding the paucity of analyses of these
emerging emitters, the long-term effects of the Coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic on economic activity and energy systems
remain unclear. Here, the authors analyze the trends and
drivers of emissions in each of the fifty-nine developing
countries whose emissions over 2010-2018 grew faster than
the global average (excluding China and India), and then
project their emissions under a range of pandemic recovery
scenarios. Although future emissions diverge considerably
depending on responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19) and
subsequent recovery pathways, the authors find that
emissions from these countries nonetheless reach a range of
5.1-7.1 Gt CO2 by 2040 in all their scenarios, substantially
in excess of emissions from these regions in published
scenarios that limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius .
The authors results highlight the critical importance of
ramping up mitigation efforts in countries that to this
point have played a limited role in contributing the stock
of atmospheric CO2 while also ensuring the sustained
economic growth that will be necessary to eliminate extreme
poverty and drive the extensive adaptation to climate change
that will be required. |
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