In November, nearly 200 countries meet in Paris for UN talks to agree a new climate deal. Find out below how their pledges - known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs in UN jargon - compare in our in-depth analysis of 14 key countries and blocs
Without new action on carbon emissions, this happens
This is why Paris is necessary. Developing countries still have a lot of developing to do – and that means big increases in emissions that would lock in dangerous global warming. That’s why, unlike the only previous international climate protocol, Paris will apply to rich and poor countries.
The European Union’s promised emissions cut will almost certainly be the most far-reaching climate offer on the table in Paris.If it is fully achieved, with no loopholes or carbon accounting tricks, the EU can say that it is walking a path that offers a greater than 50% chance of limiting global warming to the “safe” threshold of 2C.
Despite being the host of the UN summit that led to the Kyoto protocol on climate change in 1997, Japanese negotiators will arrive in Paris in November with an underwhelming plan of action for greenhouse gas reductions.
Just as US president, Barack Obama, issued a call to arms to save the climate “while we still can,” Japan announced modest carbon emission reductions that drew criticism from environment campaigners and earned it Fossil of the Day award from the Climate Action Network.
Russia’s greenhouse gas emissions did not grow in 2014, as the country entered economic downturn, due to western sanctions and the falling price of oil. In recent years, greenhouse emissions have risen, but at a much slower rate than economic growth, mainly because the economy has been restructured from heavy industry and manufacturing towards resource extraction and services, since president Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.
Barack Obama pledged the second half of his presidency to fighting climate change – even in the face of strong opposition from industry and a Republican-controlled Congress.
The target Obama set ahead of the Paris climate talks of a 26-28% cut in carbon pollution by 2025 from 2005 levels is proof of that commitment, experts said.
Canada put forward one of the weakest climate targets of any major industrialised economy, which experts said was a direct result of the Stephen Harper government’s promotion of the highly polluting tar sands industry.
The Canadian government proposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% below 2005 levels by 2030.
Australia’s emissions reduction target for 2030 is lower than some comparable developed countries, but the greatest scrutiny now is whether the new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, can improve policies widely regarded as inadequate to achieve it.
Before he was ousted in a leadership coup in September, the former prime minister Tony Abbott announced Australia would reduce emissions by between 26% and 28% of 2005 levels by 2030. Turnbull has since backed the pledge.
Abbott argued it put Australia “foursquare in the middle” of the pledges comparable economies will take to the United Nations meeting in Paris in December and argued Australia’s higher population growth and the higher economic costs of global climate action on coal exports should also be taken into account.
“It’s better than Japan. It’s almost the same as New Zealand. It’s a whisker below Canada. It’s a little below Europe. It’s about the same as the United States. It’s vastly better than Korea. Of course, it is unimaginably better than China,” Abbott said at the time.
Others disagreed. Bernie Fraser, the chairman of an independent government advisory body – the Climate Change Authority (CCA) – which the Abbott government had unsuccessfully sought to abolish, said the target put Australia “at or near the bottom of the group of countries we generally compare ourselves with”. Fraser has since resigned.
The CCA had recommended much deeper cuts of between 45% to 63% on 2000 when taken from the 2005 base year.
The Climate Institute thinktank said the target was not scientifically credible, because it did not represent Australia’s fair share of the global task to limit warming to 2C (a goal the Australian government accepts), describing it as “pathetically inadequate”.
But the focus is now on whether Turnbull changes Australia’s climate policies, which business leaders and environment groups say have little chance of meeting the new target.
Climate policy is one of the most contentious issues in Australian politics and Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership when the conservative parties were in opposition in 2009 because of his insistence that they back the then Labor government’s economy-wide emissions trading scheme.
Abbott, who wrested the Liberal leadership from him and went on to win the 2013 federal election, said at that time he thought the “settled science of climate change was absolute crap”. The first bill introduced by the Abbott government after the election victory was to repeal the emissions trading scheme, which had been eventually legislated by Labor with the backing of the Greens party.
The Abbott government also tried – unsuccessfully – to dramatically reduce Australia’s target for the uptake of renewable energy and to abolish agencies aimed at commercialising and providing finance for clean energy. Abbott and key ministers said they found wind turbines “utterly offensive” and “ugly” and promised to appoint a special commissioner to investigate complaints about health impacts of windfarms.
Turnbull has been forced to promise the conservative wing of his party that he will not revisit that argument and will stick with the coalition’s so-called “Direct Action” climate plan, which sets aside $2.5bn for a competitive grants process to pay for greenhouse gas abatement.
But it is anticipated he will bring a far less hostile approach to action on global warming.
He could change other aspects of the policy – including “baselines” for the biggest industrial emitters, which are scheduled to be set at levels which would allow many to increase their greenhouse pollution and without the aim of forcing any reductions.
Abbott once described buying international carbon permits as being like sending “money … offshore into dodgy carbon farms in Equatorial Guinea and Kazakhstan”, but when announcing the new target he did not rule out allowing offshore permits after a review of Australia’s policy in 2017-18. Turnbull could bring forward their inclusion.
The Labor opposition has not revealed what post-2020 emissions reduction target it would favour, but environment spokesman Mark Butler has said the government’s target is not high enough. Labor has promised to reintroduce an emissions trading scheme if it wins the general election in 2017.
The government modelled the economic cost of its 2030 target. It showed the 26% target would shave between 0.2% and 0.3% from Australian GDP in 2030, but the same modelling found that – based on similar assumptions, a 35% target would cut only 0.3% to 0.5% and a 45% target would cut between 0.5% and 0.7%.
Brazil’s promise to reduce total emissions by 2025 is a bold political move that should allow the country once again to play a leading role in climate negotiations.
As the first major developing nation to pledge an absolute reductions target (rather than relative to GDP), Brazil will be in a strong position to bridge the gap between rich and poor nations at the Paris talks in December.
China is the world’s largest carbon emitter due to its voracious appetite for coal to fuel its massive economy. For this reason, much attention is on China ahead of the UN climate change negotiations in Paris and its post-2020 climate action commitment was eagerly awaited.
China has changed its approach to cutting carbon emissions since the disastrous Copenhagen negotiations in 2009 when it was blamed for blocking an agreement. The government is now taking the need to cut emissions seriously and this is reflected in its submission to the United Nations. As part of its pledge to reduce carbon emissions beyond 2020, China has said it will cut its CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 60-65% from 2005 levels by 2030.
India was a day late in its submission of its climate change plan to the UN, and was the last of 140 countries to do so.
The delay was partly deliberate. The government of Narendra Modi waited until the anniversary of the birth of the Mahatma Gandhi , the revered independence leader and campaigner for a low-tech local model of economic development based on village communities, to give their announcement added resonance.
Indonesia’s pledge to cuts its carbon emissions by 29% by 2030 compared to current projections has been criticised for failing to adequately address large-scale forest and peatland loss, which account for the majority of its emissions.
Campaigners said the final submission to the UN is full of “empty words” that are too “vague” on deforestation.
Ethiopia was until recently a byword for African famine, drought and absolute poverty. But the climatically vulnerable country where 10 million people rely on food aid and which is responsible for just 0.3% of global carbon emissions will go to the Paris climate talks as a leader of other developing countries, planning to hold its emissions and to double the size of its economy by 2030.
Officials in the ministry of the environment in Addis Ababa say they have no option but to act on climate change. “Ethiopia did not cause [it]. But we are confronted by the threat that it poses. It has the potential to destabilise us and other countries in the Horn of Africa, bring more fierce competition for water and other resources,” says a government spokesman.
Mexico received international praise for being the first major developing country to submit its pledge to the UN on curbing greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the Paris summit.
Mexico promised to start reducing emissions from 2026, with an unconditional pledge that by 2030 they would be 22% lower than business-as-usual projections. With conditions, the government said the reductions could be 40%.
Morocco will host next year’s UN climate summit and is becoming an Arab leader at the Paris talks in December. Earlier this year the north African country, which is 95% dependent on Middle East oil and gas for its energy, committed to spending $10bn (£6.5bn) of its own money to make a 13% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
But it also pledged to cut emissions a further 19% if $35bn of additional money can be generated from UN climate funds, the private sector and other countries.
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