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Indonesia’s NDC bodes ill for the Paris Agreement

Nature Climate Change volume 8, page 842 (2018)Cite this article

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To the Editor — The Paris Agreement on climate change seeks to keep the increase in global temperature below 2 °C by 2100, with further efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C. However, the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted by the Parties to the UNFCCC have been estimated to imply a global warming of 2.6–3.1 °C (ref.1). The Agreement also states that targets for the reduction of emissions should be strengthened over time. This strengthening would obviously be required to achieve even the 2 °C target, meaning that all Parties would need to both deliver on their initial commitments and go beyond them.

A reduction in emissions from changes in land use is important for achieving the goal of the Agreement2. Indonesia’s emissions from land-use change are among the three highest national estimates2, and it is ranked as the eighth highest global emitter over all sources3. It appeared to pledge an ‘unconditional reduction target of 29% and conditional reduction target up to 41% of the business-as-usual scenario by 2030’ in its NDC4. However, in Table 1 of the Indonesian NDC — which presents the breakdown of the sectoral contributions to emissions reductions — the total reduction in emissions amounts to 38% by 2030 (29% unconditional and 9% conditional). A reduction of 38% could be regarded as technically consistent with the stated reduction target of ‘up to’ 41%, but it seems contradictory for the main body of the NDC to present a commitment that is noted by the international community2,5 and immediately watered down in a little-noticed accompanying table.

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References

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the participants of a seminar presented at The World Bank, Washington, on 18 July 2018.

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  1. Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Luca Tacconi

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  1. Luca Tacconi
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Correspondence to Luca Tacconi.

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Tacconi, L. Indonesia’s NDC bodes ill for the Paris Agreement. Nature Clim Change 8, 842 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0277-8

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