Adding up the Numbers: Mitigation Pledges under the Copenhagen Accord

March 2010

In the Copenhagen Accord, countries agree that “deep cuts in global emissions are required… so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius…” To date, nearly 50 parties (counting the European Union as a single party) have submitted specific mitigation pledges under the Accord. Several analyses (summarized here [1]) have assessed whether these pledges are consistent with the goal of limiting global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius.

Our review of these analyses finds that:

Most show the pledges are inadequate to achieve a 2-degree goal, and instead imply a global emissions pathway leading to 3 to 3.9 degrees of warming.
Collectively, the pledges would reduce global emissions between 4 percent and16 percent below business as usual (BAU) in 2020. (All projections of the pledges’ impact on emissions show ranges of reductions because many of the pledges specify ranges, with the more ambitious end of the range applying if stipulated conditions are met. ) A 2-degree pathway requires reductions of 21 percent to 26 percent below BAU.
Pledges by developed countries would reduce their emissions 10 percent to 13 percent below BAU in 2020, and pledges by developing countries would reduce their emissions 6 percent to 9 percent below BAU.

Key findings of the individual analyses can be found here [1].

Click here [2] for more information about the Copenhagen Accord.