Today at the COP24 climate summit in Katowice, Poland a coalition of countries, including the EU, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, committed to increase their climate targets by 2020. The commitment is a response to the findings of the landmark IPCC 1.5°C report.
The signatories state that they are determined to step up their ambition by 2020, in line with the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. They will achieve this through increasing their climate pledges, the so-called Nationally Determined Contributions, increasing short term action and long-term low emission development strategies.
The recent Special Report of the IPCC on 1.5°C warming has shown that in order to have a safe chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, national pledges for emission reductions by 2030 need to be substantially increased.
In reaction to the statement, Wendel Trio, Director of Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe said:
“The spirit of Paris is back. The statement will boost greater ambition at the crunch time of these so far underwhelming talks. We welcome the fact that many European countries take the IPCC report seriously and want to scale up action to fight climate change. For the EU this must mean a commitment to significantly increase its 2030 target by 2020, even beyond the 55% reduction some Member States and the European Parliament are calling for. We call upon the countries that have not signed the statement so far to stop ignoring the science.”
ENDS
Contact:
Ania Drazkiewicz, CAN Europe Head of Communications, ania@caneurope.org, +32 494 525 738
Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe is Europe’s leading NGO coalition fighting dangerous climate change. With over 150 member organisations from 35 European countries, representing over 1.700 NGOs and more than 40 million citizens, CAN Europe promotes sustainable climate, energy and development policies throughout Europe.
