Raising Ambition Sample Clauses

Raising Ambition. Nonetheless, the adoption of the guidelines only prepares the framework for the real work to come, namely real reductions. Only a handful of countries announced in Katowice that they were going to strengthen their contributions, including India, Canada, Ukraine and Jamaica. Germany made a particularly poor showing, having to admit in a stocktake of pre-2020 action that it was going to miss its 2020 emission target by a wide margin. Germany had also contributed to stymying a push by the European Commission to strengthen the EU’s 2030 target. Germany could have made a positive contribution by communicating the phase-out plan for coal consumption and production, but the delay of the “coal commission” that was tasked to prepare that plan led to yet another lost opportunity for climate leadership. With the negotiations on the Paris implementation guidelines (mostly) out of the way, it is now possible to focus on the task of raising ambition. As UN Secretary-General Xxxxxxxx put it in a statement read out in the COP plenary after the deal had been adopted, “From now on my five priorities will be ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition and ambition.”63 To this end, he is convening a special summit on climate change in 2019. This summit and the ongoing process under the UNFCCC will hopefully help to galvanise national discussions on stepping up climate ambition. Several dozen countries from the “High Ambition Coalition” that had formed at the Paris conference pledged to “step up” their ambition until 2020 by enhancing their NDCs, increasing short-term action, and adoption of long-term low-emission development strategies.64 However, it bears noting that the coalition has so far only constituted and re-constituted itself to save the UN climate process. Now that the work of agreeing rules is mostly complete, what is needed is rather an action coalition committed to making actual emission cuts. It would thus make sense to form the High Ambition Coalition into something more stable in order to influence the process throughout the year, not just in the final days of a make-it-or-break-it COP. COP24 thus has proven that the consensus-based process in the climate regime can deliver common rules for assessing, monitoring and reporting of information. This is no small achievement because a sound information base is indispensible for any serious action. But it remains to be seen whether the Paris Agreement can fulfil the hopes put on it when adopted in Paris – that it is able...