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Policy

Reconsidering Copenhagen

Nature Climate Change volume 1, pages 297–298 (2011)Cite this article

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The voluntary emission reductions pledged under the Copenhagen Accord are almost certainly insufficient to limit global warming to 2 °C. However, using the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund for mitigation efforts could achieve the reductions needed to fill the gap.

Never before has climate politics been more in the limelight than during the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, when presidents and prime ministers gathered to find a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. But the high expectations of many observers went unfulfilled, and criticism of a loose agreement based on voluntary targets was abounded. Most climate scientists doubted that an international policy following the 'collection-box principle'1 — in which nations pledge to achieve voluntary goals — would achieve drastic emission cuts. Furthermore, they pointed out that even if all the pledges are achieved in full, temperatures will probably still rise by more than 3 °C (ref. 2). Writing in Climatic Change, economists Carlo Carraro and Emanuele Massetti3 argue that this view might be overly pessimistic, because the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund (CGCF) — the second, and so-far less-appreciated, pillar of the Copenhagen Accord — could facilitate the additional reductions needed to avoid dangerous climate change.

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Figure 1: Voluntary financial contributions.

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References

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Affiliations

  1. Robert Marschinski and Michael Jakob are at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), PO Box 601203, 14412 Potsdam, Germany

    Robert Marschinski & Michael Jakob

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  1. Robert Marschinski
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  2. Michael Jakob
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Correspondence to Robert Marschinski or Michael Jakob.

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Marschinski, R., Jakob, M. Reconsidering Copenhagen. Nature Clim Change 1, 297–298 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1201

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