The calculations are flawed. In an article published on Sunday, November 7, the Washington Post reveals that many countries report greenhouse gas emissions well below independent estimates in their reports to the United Nations. These data serve in particular as a basis for the negotiations which are currently being held in Glasgow for COP26.
The journal, with the support of researchers, sifted through the reports of the 196 countries that signed the Paris Agreement. The difference between the emissions they report and their actual emissions “goes from 8.5 billion to 13.3 billion tons, (…) enough to increase the warming of the Earth”, alert him Washington post. Philippe Ciais, research director at the French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA) and researcher at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences (LSCE), participated in this analysis.
Franceinfo: The study in which you participated reveals that countries underestimate their greenhouse gas emissions. How did you arrive at this finding?
Philippe Ciais: Yes, we have analyzed what are called emission inventories, declared by countries and used as a basis for negotiations at COP26. By adding up all the official figures, we have counted fewer emissions overall than scientists’ best estimates. There is therefore a deficit, emissions which are missing in the declarations of the countries. The difference, when converting everything to CO2 equivalent, is 20 to 30% of emissions between these official figures and the global scientific estimates.
What is this gap due to?
It depends on the country. Reported emissions are, for example, always lower than independent estimates for oil or gas extractors. Second, many countries have not reported their shows for a long time. Only Kyoto Protocol countries are required to do so each year. Iran, for example, provided only one national communication of its broadcasts in 2010.
Finally, if some countries like Canada report less absorption of carbon by natural sinks [ces réservoirs qui stockent le carbone dans les sols] than what is observed, others overestimate the capacity of their forests to capture carbon. This is the case of Malaysia, where the expansion of oil palm cultivation causes a lot of deforestation and loss of carbon from the soil to the atmosphere. In the forests that remain, the country visibly overestimates the amount of carbon absorbed, going as far as being three or four times higher than what gives plausible growth rates for tropical forests. The country’s statements appear to be influenced by a lobby of palm oil producers, who for example minimize the loss of peatlands, normally rich in carbon, when new plantations are created.
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from States signatories to the Paris Agreement are insufficient and countries do not respect them. You are explaining to us today that they are also based on skewed figures. All this is not very encouraging …
This is not encouraging, no … First, NDCs are often not quantitative, they do not provide a carbon budget, but a percentage reduction. Take China: it gives indications on a peak in its emissions before 2030, on its carbon intensity [le rapport entre la quantité d’énergie utilisé par le pays et le carbone émis] and for the very distant future, carbon neutrality in 2060. But there is no precise trajectory. I would also like to point out that France, which has a trajectory of neutrality and monitoring every 5 years, has not achieved its reduction objectives over the 2015-2018 period. So it is not enough to make a very good plan for decarbonization, we must also stick to it.
In addition, if we start from underestimated emissions, the effects of a reduction will be less impressive. All this makes it even less possible to achieve our objective of limiting the rise in temperature to + 2 ° C.