Ireland has missed a UN deadline to submit new targets for reducing carbon emissions. Just ten out of nearly 200 countries who were required to deliver new climate plans by today, 10 February, under the terms of the Paris Agreement, did so on time, according to a UN database which has tracked the submissions.
The Paris Agreement to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in Paris in 2015 at the Conference of Parties (COP) summit 21. Under the agreement, world leaders pledge to try to prevent global temperatures rising by more than 1.5C above those of the late 19th Century – with almost all of the world’s nations agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions, “strengthening the global response to climate change.”
Despite this, such pledges have had little effect in actually cutting the world’s annual emissions, which have risen from the equivalent of 35bn tonnes of CO2 twenty years ago to 60bn tonnes today.
The Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016 and currently, it has 195 parties who have ratified it. Ireland ratified it in 2016.
Just a handful of countries handed in their upgraded targets in time, including Britain, the United States and Brazil, which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit.
The US pledge is largely being seen as symbolic, made before US President Donald Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the deal.
On his first day in office, Mr Trump signed an executive order which argued that such agreements “do not reflect our country’s values or our contributions to the pursuit of economic and environmental objectives” and “unfairly burden the United States” – highlighting the costs to American taxpayers.
In November, former leader of the Green Party, Eamon Ryan, who travelled to Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November, called on the EU to ensure renewed backing for the Paris pact amid “difficult” negotiations. He claimed that there would be a likely retreat from climate action by rhe next US administration led by President Trump.
“There is a real risk that these negotiations could fail, and we will not find a path forward,” Mr Ryan said. “It will be hard to get agreement in a world that is so divided and under such stress, but that is what we have to do.”
Ireland and Costa Rica were selected as the ministerial pair with responsibility for the negotiations on climate adaptation. Mr Ryan said he believed Ireland had been given the role as it was good at providing finance for climate adaptation.
“It makes up 80 per cent of the country’s climate spending, which has doubled over the past four years. Ireland had a good cultural understanding of how development aid can best work,” he said, adding:
“It is a red line issue for the most vulnerable countries because it is the area where public finance is most needed and least available.”
While Ireland missed out on submitting its targets, the UK formally submitted its own targets for 2035, with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband confirming the submission of ‘early and ambitious’ target to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 81 per cent against 1990 levels.
Appearing before the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee last month, Mr Miliband referred to the US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, claiming that the rise of net zero was “unstoppable.”
“Other countries believed it was in their national self-interest to remain in the Paris Agreement and to continue working on these (climate) issues, because they saw both the advantages of moving forward on this and the dangers for them of not moving forward.
“So I think the transition is unstoppable, not fast enough, but unstoppable.
“Under the first Trump term, we still saw quite significant investment in renewables. And that makes me think that whatever their decisions on the Paris Agreement, there is always common ground that we can seek with the new administration.”
Separately, the Irish government faces eye-watering potential fines totalling up to €8 billion if it misses 2030 climate change targets around emissions, set out by the Government in the Climate Act, 2021.
The law legally commits the Irish Government to achieving a 51 per cent reduction in Ireland’s carbon emissions by the year 2030.
However, last year, the Environmental Protection Agency stated that Ireland is actually on course to achieve only a 29 per cent reduction.