EXPLORING FAIR AND AMBITIOUS MITIGATION CONTRIBUTIONS OF ASIAN ECONOMIES FOR THE GLOBAL WARMING LIMIT UNDER THE PARIS AGREEMENT

Abstract

Focusing on the mitigation responsibilities and efforts, this paper provides a unified estimation of allowable emission quotas for a number of Asian economies to limit the global temperature rise well below 2°C based on a range of effort-sharing approaches. The study also explores the inconsistency between their planned emission pathways under the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the allowable emissions to achieve the 2°C target. The results show that most of the Asian developing economies would be in favor of the Equal-Per-Capita and Grandfather criteria, for which they would obtain more allowable emissions quota. However, even with the most favorable criterion, official mitigation pledges represented by NDCs are far less enough for these developing Asian economies such as China, India, Vietnam, Thailand and Pakistan, as their emission pathways under NDCs significantly exceed the ideal pathways under all effort-sharing approaches. In contrast, most of the Asian developed economies have already planned reductions of annual CO2 emissions under NDCs, in line with their ideal pathways under the most favorable effort-sharing approach. However, their reductions of emissions require deep strengthening of deployment in low-carbon, zero-carbon and negative-carbon techniques, given the current growing trend of emissions for these economies.