Nearly 200 nations have
reached a deal, announced Saturday morning after all-night negotiations, to
limit the use of greenhouse gases far more powerful than carbon dioxide in a
major effort to fight climate change.
The talks on
hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, were called the first test of global will since
the historic Paris Agreement to cut carbon emissions was reached last year.
HFCs are described as the world’s fastest-growing climate pollutant and are
used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Experts say cutting them is the
fastest way to reduce global warming.
President
Barack
Obama, in a statement Saturday, called the new deal “an ambitious and
far-reaching solution to this looming crisis.” The spokesman for U.N.
Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon called it “critically
important.”
The agreement, unlike the
broader Paris one, is legally binding. It caps and reduces the use of HFCs in a
gradual process beginning by 2019 with action by developed countries including
the United States, the world’s second-worst polluter. More than 100 developing
countries, including China, the world’s top carbon emitter, will start taking
action by 2024, when HFC consumption levels should peak.
A small group of countries
including India, Pakistan and some Gulf states pushed for and secured a later
start in 2028, saying their economies need more time to grow. That’s three
years earlier than India, the world’s third-worst polluter, had first proposed.
“It’s a very historic
moment, and we are all very delighted that we have come to this point where we
can reach a consensus and agree to most of the issues that were on the table,”
said India’s chief delegate,
Ajay Narayan Jha.
Environmental groups had
hoped that the deal could reduce global warming by a half-degree Celsius by the
end of this century. This agreement gets about 90 percent of the way there,
said
Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance
and Sustainable Development.
Zaelke’s group said this is
the “largest temperature reduction ever achieved by a single agreement.”
The new agreement is “equal
to stopping the entire world’s fossil-fuel CO2 emissions for more than two
years,”
David Doniger, climate and clean air program director
with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.
It is estimated that the
agreement will cut the global levels of HFCs by 80 to 85 percent by 2047, the
World Resources Institute said in a statement.
Experts said they hope that
market forces will help speed up the limits agreed to in the deal.
HFCs were introduced in the
1980s as a substitute for ozone-depleting gases. But their danger has grown as
air conditioner and refrigerator sales have soared in emerging economies like
China and India. HFCs are also found in inhalers and insulating foams.
Major economies have
debated how quickly to phase out HFCs. The United States, whose delegation was
led by Secretary of State
John Kerry, and Western countries
want quick action. Nations such as India want to give their industries more
time to adjust.
“Thank God we got to this
agreement that is good for all nations, that takes into consideration all
regional and national issues,” said
Taha Mohamed Zatari, the
head of Saudi Arabia’s negotiating team.
Small island states and
many African countries had pushed for early timeframes, saying they face the
biggest threat from climate change.
“It may not be entirely
what the islands wanted, but it is a good deal,”
Mattlan Zackhras,
the minister-in-assistance to the president of the Marshall Islands, said in a
statement. “We all know we must go further, and we will go further.”
The U.N. says the next
meeting in 2017 will determine how much of the billions of dollars needed to
finance the reduction of HFCs will be provided by countries.
HFCs are less plentiful
than carbon dioxide, but Kerry said last month that they currently emit as much
pollution as 300 coal-fired power plants each year. That amount will rise
significantly over the coming decades as air conditioning units and
refrigerators reach hundreds of millions of new people.
HFCs don’t harm the ozone
layer like chlorofluorocarbons and similar gases that were eliminated under the
1987 Montreal Protocol. The entire world ratified that agreement, helping to
repair holes in the ozone that helps shield the planet from the harmful rays of
the sun. The aim of this meeting was to attach an amendment to that treaty
dealing specifically with HFCs.
“This is about much more
than the ozone layer and HFCs. It is a clear statement by all world leaders
that the green transformation started in Paris is irreversible and
unstoppable,”
Erik Solheim, executive director of the U.N.
Environment Program, said in a statement.
Environmental groups were
already turning attention Saturday to other greenhouse gases like carbon
dioxide.
“Acting on HFCs does not
exempt us from acting on CO2 or other important greenhouse gases like methane.
We emit considerably more carbon, and it lingers in the atmosphere for more
than 500 years,”
Carol Werner, executive director of the
Environmental and Energy Study Institute, said in a statement.
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/global-deal-reached-limit-powerful-greenhouse-gases/