What do we know about the way developing country governments calculate their baselines? Arguably, increased transparency about the methods and assumptions to develop baselines is warranted, and it is this aspect that the new publication ‘National Greenhouse Gas Emissions Baseline Scenerios: Learning from Experiences of Developing Countries’ seeks to address.
Several parties to the UNFCCC have pledged quantified emissions reductions and actions for 2020 (and beyond) relative to their baseline scenario. Understanding these pledges and actions is essential for assessing the likelihood of achieving the agreed global goal of limiting global warming to 2°C.
Since mid-2011, the Danish Energy Agency (DEA), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the UNEP Risø Centre (URC) have convened experts from ten developing countries (Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam) , to share practices on setting national greenhouse gas emissions baseline scenarios. One output of this collaboration is a joint publication presenting and analyzing practices by those ten countries.
In Part 1 of the publication, the editors (DEA, OECD and URC) synthesise current practices in the ten countries and suggest elements for good practice in preparing baseline scenarios. Part 2 of the report contains country-specific descriptions of the approaches followed in each country, written by experts in the participating countries.
The editors argue that increasing transparency and assessing the uncertainty of baseline scenarios should both be cornerstones of any efforts to develop national baselines. Given the role baselines already play in international climate negotiations, the above goals can only help establish an open dialogue between countries, by bringing further clarity to the positions of the different countries.
You can download the report here.
For additional information, please contact dapu@dtu.dk