Many regional governments and businesses have played their part in tackling climate change.
National governments may have failed to take meaningful action to tackle climate change in recent years, but many regional governments and businesses have played their part.
Speaking after a United Nations climate summit in New York in September, Ban Ki-moon, the UN’s secretary-general, said: “The actions announced today by governments, businesses, finance and civil society show that many partners are eager to confront the challenges of climate change together.”
“Change is in the air,” he said.
At the UN talks, 150 governments, corporations and NGOs agreed to do more to tackle deforestation (see below). By 2020 the loss of forests should be cut by 50%, they said, and by 2030 deforestation should be stopped completely. That would lead to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of between 4.5-8.8 billon tonnes a year – the equivalent of the emissions from one billion cars.
Another proposal came from mayors of big cities such as New York, Seoul, Paris and Johannesburg. They signed the Mayor’s Compact, an initiative involving 2,000 cities. Of those, 228 have voluntary set targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, with 144 of those setting short-term emissions reduction targets (ie, before 2020). One of the projects is in London, where the authorities want to work with car-makers to develop zero-emissions vehicles.
The transport sector is responsible for around 20% of global CO2 emissions. Heavy vehicles have a major impact on climate and air quality, and that will itensify as transport levels increase. One of the initiatives introduced at the UN summit in September to tackle this problem was the Green Freight Europe scheme.
The scheme, supported by national governments but also by the likes of Deutsche Post, DHL, Hewlett Packard, IKEA and Volvo, will be launched in December. It aims for better co-operation between national green- freight schemes through the adoption of fuel-saving technologies.
On energy efficiency, leaders from 40 countries joined forces with large cities and corporations to set up the Global Fuel Economy Initiative, which aims to cut emissions and reduce energy costs. Its goal is to double the energy efficiency of all new vehicles by 2030, which would save more than one gigatonne of CO2 a year by 2025.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) maintains a database of private- sector initiatives (it was set up in 2005 and last updated after a conference in Bonn in June). It shows that a variety of projects have been launched in the fields of tourism, transport and science and technology.
One example is a water-purification technology study launched by Siemens. According to the German firm, climate change will increase the problem of scarcity of water.
In order to help the UN achieve its goal of reducing the number of people who do not have access to clean water, Siemens developed portable water purification systems that need no electricity and can therefore be used to help people affected by climate disasters.