2.3.2 Government Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies Notes

Policies to Address Emissions and Resilience

1. Climate change poses significant challenges, but global efforts, market-based solutions, and innovative technologies offer pathways to mitigate its impacts.
2. This section explores three key strategies:
   1. International agreements
   2. Carbon offsetting and trading
   3. Geo-engineering technologies

Geopolitical Attempts: the UN, Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement

The United Nations: Assessing the Knowledge and Coordinating Global Policy Framework

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Science and Policy Guidance

1. In 1988 the United Nations established Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - body responsible for assessing the scientific knowledge about climate change, its impacts, and potential adaptation and mitigation strategies.
2. The IPCC key functions:
   1. Assessment Reports: Periodic reports that compile the latest scientific findings on climate change serving as a critical resource for governments and international organizations.
   2. Policy Guidance: While the IPCC does not set policy, its findings inform global climate negotiations and help shape international climate policy frameworks.
   3. Collaboration: The IPCC collaborates with researchers, governments, and other organizations to promote the understanding of climate science.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change: Negotiations and Policy Making

1. In 1992 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) - an international treaty - was signed.
2. The UNFCCC key features:
   1. Framework for Negotiations: The UNFCCC provides a structure for ongoing negotiations among countries, involving commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support climate adaptation and mitigation efforts.
   2. Annual Conferences: Annual Conferences of the Parties (COP), where member nations convene to assess progress, and negotiate agreements, such as the Paris Agreement reached at COP21 in 2015.
   3. Support for Developing Countries: The UNFCCC emphasizes the importance of supporting developing countries in their efforts to address climate change, providing financial resources, technology transfer, and capacity-building initiatives.

Kyoto Protocol (1997): Binding Targets for Developed Nations

1. The Kyoto Protocol was the first international treaty to set legally binding emission reduction targets for developed countries.

Key Features

1. Emission Targets: Aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5% below 1990 levels by 2012.
2. Flexible Mechanisms: Included carbon trading, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and Joint Implementation (JI).

Strengths and Challenges

1. Strengths:
   1. Established a legal framework for emission reductions.
   2. Pioneered market-based mechanisms.
2. Challenges:
   1. Excluded all MICs and LICs including major emitters like China and India.
   2. The U.S. did not ratify the treaty, Canada withdrew from it, Russia and Japan participated only partially, limiting its overall impact.

Paris Agreement (2015): A Universal Commitment

1. The Paris Agreement is a landmark international treaty adopted in 2015, aiming to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with efforts to cap it at 1.5°C.

Key Features

1. Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs): Countries submit voluntary targets for reducing emissions.
2. Global Stocktake: Progress is reviewed every five years to enhance ambition.
3. Climate Finance: Developed countries pledged $100 billion annually to support developing nations in adaptation and mitigation.

Strengths and Challenges

1. Strengths:
   1. Broad participation (over 190 countries).
   2. Focus on both mitigation and adaptation.
2. Challenges:
   1. No binding enforcement mechanisms.
   2. The US withdrew, rejoined, and withdrew again from it, other countries (except for the EU) have consistently failed to meet targets.

Carbon Offsetting and Trading

What Is Carbon Offsetting?

1. Carbon offsetting allows individuals, companies, or countries to compensate for their emissions by investing in projects that reduce or remove greenhouse gases.
2. These investments usually take place in a different location.

Common Offset Projects

1. Reforestation: Planting trees to absorb $CO_2$.
2. Renewable Energy: Funding solar, wind, or hydroelectric projects.
3. Methane Capture: Reducing emissions from landfills or agriculture.

Carbon Trading: A Market-Based Solution

1. Carbon trading involves buying and selling permits to emit greenhouse gases, creating a financial incentive to reduce emissions.

Types of Carbon Trading Systems

1. Cap-and-Trade: Governments set a cap on emissions and distribute or auction permits. Companies that reduce emissions can sell excess permits.
2. Carbon Tax: A direct tax on emissions, encouraging reductions.

Benefits and Criticisms

1. Benefits:
   1. Encourages cost-effective emission reductions.
   2. Supports sustainable development in low-income countries.
2. Criticisms:
   1. Offsets may not always deliver promised reductions.
   2. Trading systems can be complex, prone to manipulation, and increases price of energy.

Geo-Engineering Technologies

1. Geo-engineering refers to large-scale (planetary scale) interventions deliberately designed to alter the Earth's climate system and counteract global warming.
2. Geo-engineering methods are divided into two main categories:
   1. Solar Radiation Management (SRM): Techniques that aim to reflect a portion of the sun's energy back into space to cool the Earth. Examples include cloud seeding, aerosols injection into the stratosphere, and reflective surfaces installed on the planet, as well as in outer space.
   2. Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR): Approaches focused on removing CO₂ from the atmosphere and sequestering it. This can involve large-scale reforestation, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), and direct air capture technologies.
3. Some geo-engineering ideas are seen as fairly radical, perhaps unworkable, and beyond current human technological and financial capabilities.
4. Geo-engineering also raises complex ethical, environmental, and political questions, including potential unintended consequences, governance challenges, and issues of equity and justice.

Solar Reflectors

1. Solar reflectors aim to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by reflecting it back into space.

How It Works

1. Deploying giant mirrors in space directly reflecting some of the sunlight to outer space.
2. Using reflective and bright materials on Earth's surface (e.g., white roofs or reflective crops) to amplify surface albedo.

Pros and Cons

1. Pros:
   1. Could rapidly reduce global temperatures.
2. Cons:
   1. High cost and technical challenges.
   2. Potential unintended consequences, such as disrupting weather patterns.

Cloud Seeding

1. Cloud seeding involves injecting substances like silver iodide, sodium chloride (table salt), or dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) as seeding agents to boost cloud cover in order to increase rainfall or - in this case - reflect sunlight.

How It Works

1. Aircraft or drones release particles into atmosphere, encouraging water droplets to form clouds and eventually fall as rain.

Pros and Cons

1. Pros:
   1. Can alleviate droughts or reduce heat.
2. Cons:
   1. Limited effectiveness and high cost.
   2. Potential environmental and geopolitical risks.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)

1. CCS involves capturing $CO_2$ emissions directly from power plants and industrial processes or removing it from the atmosphere and storing it underground.

How It Works

1. $CO_2$ is captured, compressed, and injected into geological formations such as depleted oil fields or saline aquifers.

Pros and Cons

1. Pros:
   1. Reduces $CO_2$ concentration while keeping obtaining energy from fossil fuel use.
   2. Can be integrated into existing infrastructure.
2. Cons:
   1. High cost and energy requirements.
   2. Risk of $CO_2$ leakage.

Reflection and Broader Implications

1. Addressing climate change requires a combination of global political cooperation, market-based solutions, and innovative technologies.
2. However, each approach has its limitations.