In August 2021, an independent and charitable organisation, Oxfam, released a report, namely, Tightening the Net just a few months ahead of the UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. It states that net zero carbon targets, announced by many countries, may be a ‘dangerous distraction’ from the priority of cutting carbon emissions. As per the report, it will also allow rich nations and corporates to continue dirty business as usual. In all, some 124 nations out of 202, surveyed in the report, have made ‘net zero’ pledges. Efforts are being made to include the remaining countries on board to a ‘race to zero’ campaign. The summit will particularly focus on two important aspects of the Paris Agreement—how emissions are to be reduced, and how reductions will be measured.
About ‘Net Zero’
‘Net zero’, also called carbon-neutrality, does not imply that a country would bring down its emissions to zero. Such a scenario would mean reaching a state where there are no emissions at all, which is not practical and is also hard to comprehend. As such, ‘net zero’ implies compensating a country’s emissions by absorption and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere through carbon sinks, which is an effective means of absorbing carbon. Until recently, the Amazon rainforests in South America acted as carbon sinks. But due to large scale deforestation, the eastern parts of these forests started emitting CO2 instead of absorbing emissions. By creating carbon sinks, country can even have negative emissions, it is actual emissions are lesser than its absorption and removal. For instance, Bhutan has negative emissions, as it absorbs more than it emits.
Key Findings of the Report
Some of the key findings of the report are as follows:
- Addressing the challenge of climate change only by way of planting more trees, requires 1.6 billion hectares of new forests to remove the world’s excess carbon emissions by the year 2050. Such a strategy could prove to be devastating because—
- several countries and companies are banking on land and natural sinks to meet net zero targets.
- the EU’s plans rely on forests and nature to remove 225 Mt CO2e (metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent) of emissions, which could require a maximum of 90 million ha of land if EU countries were to rely solely on afforestation to meet this target.
- the net zero targets of just four of the big oil and gas producers—Shell (US), BP (London), TotalEnergies (France), and ENI (Italy)—alone could require an area of land twice the size of the UK.
- if the oil and gas sector as a whole adopted similar net zero targets, it could end up requiring land that is nearly half the size of the US, or one-third of the world’s farmland.
- in India, traditional lands have been fenced off, and communities who have rights to use this land have been forcibly evicted and left homeless, impacting nearly half a million tribal and forest-dwelling people.
- To limit global warming below 1.5 °C and to prevent irreversible damage from climate change, the world needs to be collectively on track and should aim to cut emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 from 2010 levels, with the sharpest cuts being made by the biggest emitters.
- Countries’ plans to cut emissions will only lead to a one per cent reduction by the year 2030. Significantly, if only land-based methods to deal with climate change are used, food prices are expected to rise by 80 per cent by the year 2050.
- Reducing emissions cannot be considered a substitute for cutting emissions, but these should be counted separately.
- Companies should commit to deep and sustained emissions reductions in the near term, to choosing a path with the least cumulative emissions and to reaching net zero by 2050 or earlier.
- Companies should disclose and commit to reducing emissions across all scopes in accordance with the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi).
- While land-based removals could be necessary for companies whose value chains are based on land use and agriculture, companies should account for them separately.
- Companies should not include the use of offsets as part of their efforts to reduce emissions and meet their science-based targets. SBTi requires that companies set targets based on emission reductions through direct action within their own operations and/or their value chains. Where companies want to scale up their ambitions and efforts beyond reducing their own emissions in line with their science-based targets, they can help finance the transition to net zero by mid-century or earlier through high-quality offsets that provide environmental and social value and have the right safeguards in place.
- Given the outsized role of the fossil fuel sector in contributing to the climate crisis, companies in the sector must commit to phasing out investments in expanding fossil fuel production as part of their net zero targets. Companies are welcome to support community ecosystem-based solutions, but they cannot count the carbon removed to meet their net zero targets.
- Net zero commitments must include a clear road map for achieving net zero emissions with near-term (2030), medium-term (2040), and long-term (2050) targets.
- Commitments must be broken down into distinct targets for reductions and removals.
- Commitments should cover all key sectors and include sector-specific targets, including separate targets for energy and the agriculture, forestry, and land use sector. Targets should include non-CO2GHG emissions such as methane.
- There should be mechanisms for ongoing reporting and tracking of progress towards the implementation of net zero commitments.
Challenges
Different Definitions According to a special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018, countries must bring carbon dioxide emissions to ‘net zero’ by 2050 to keep global warming within 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels. However, there is less agreement on which substances ‘net zero’ applies to. As a result, countries and organisations have defined the phrase ‘net zero’ as per their own criteria. In such a scenario, a definition must be agreed upon for accountability. Otherwise, the 2015 Paris agreement’s aim to limit warming to between 1.5°C and 2°C by mid-century might become impossible to achieve.
Impact of Definitions Joeri Rogelj at Imperial College London and his colleagues have shown that how varying definitions of net zero can impact outcomes. For instance, reducing CO2 emissions halts warming, but the CO2 that already exists in the atmosphere will remain for hundreds of years. Similarly, cutting other greenhouse gases could affect warming faster but eliminating them is more complex than cutting carbon.
Further, the relative quantities of these reductions in emission will also affect the gases’ overall rates of decline. In some cases, temperatures might not start to decline, even with emissions cutting.
Ambiguity about the Word ‘Net’ The word ‘net’ also creates ambiguity. Net zero is the balance between emissions produced and emissions removed. As per previous emissions reductions rules, high-emitting countries were to offset their emissions with the lower-emitting countries by buying and selling carbon as a commodity on the many carbon-trading exchanges, set up around the world. Carbon trading allows high-emitting countries to reduce their net emissions without actually reducing the overall amount of carbon they release into the atmosphere. Further, such countries could also claim carbon credits if they finance clean energy or plant trees in low-emitting countries.
If the high emitters keep on using such measures, the world could reach ‘net zero’ only in the technical sense of the word. Consequently, the world will warm, and a greater burden will then fall on climate-vulnerable countries. This is why countries most vulnerable to climate change, especially those in the global south, are concerned about the increasing use of offsets to reach net zero. So, these rules expired under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in 2020.
Determining Policy Areas This situation demands clarification on three policy areas—(i) the scope of emissions reductions; (ii) their adequacy and fairness; and (iii) concrete steps towards achieving net zero.
Announcements about ‘Net Zero’
New Zealand, in 2019, passed the Zero Carbon Act, which committed the country to zero carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner in order to meet its Paris climate accord commitments. The UK also passed a legislation in the same year, requiring the government to reduce the UK’s net emissions by 100 per cent, relative to 1990 levels by the year 2050. Recently, the US president, Joe Biden announced that the country will cut its emissions by at least 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. John Kerry, the US’s climate envoy, launched a bipartisan organisation, called, World War Zero in 2019 in order to bring together unlikely allies on climate change and with the goal of reaching net zero emissions in the country by 2050. The European Union (EU) has a similar plan, called, ‘Fit for 55’. The European Commission has asked all of its 27 member-countries to cut emissions by 55 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030.
In 2020, China also announced that it would reach net zero emission by 2060, and would not allow its emissions to go beyond what they would reach in 2030.
In India, a debate is under way in this regard.
Conclusion
The devastating effects of climate change will not just recede. They will cause millions to suffer for centuries to come, no matter how ambitious targets to attain net zero are set-up. The need is to go beyond net zero, and to start restoring the climate. For this purpose, we will have to reduce emissions to zero as well as to remove huge amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the atmosphere. Restoration is not about promoting one specific removal technique, rather supporting the basic aim of restoring the climate—to have a safe future.
Therefore, climate restoration should be on every level, including campaigning, urging governments and companies to start acting, urging every citizen to do what they can to make the dream of restoration a reality. Unless drastic action is taken, a future of terrible hunger, extreme temperatures, floods, storms, and droughts is a certainty.
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