Below 1.5–to Stay Alive

Last week’s Joint Contact Group (JCG) on the 2013-2015 review failed to come to a single conclusion on its three year work, which had included the ‘Structured Expert Dialogue’ (SED). SED’s findings were: 1)We are not on track to a ‘below 2°C path’. 2) 2°C warming would be dangerous. 3) Keeping warming to below 1.5°C would avoid many disastrous impacts.

ECO points to the need to include the 1.5 degree goal in the new agreement based on common but differentiated responsibilities and strong financial support and technical assistance to developing countries. We are also seeing intriguing shifts. The EU said in SBI last Friday that limiting warming to 2 degrees is not enough for vulnerable countries. Germany, France, Italy and Australia have announced in the last days that they want a 1.5° goal to be included in the agreement.

Article 3.3 of the Convention requires precautionary measures, and ‘where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason’ not to act. So let’s act! Over to the COP President to take the results of these excellent three years of intensive work and make the conclusions public and official to the COP.