Climate change is a global challenge that can only be addressed through international cooperation. Climate policy at the international level focuses on developing strategies and measures to protect the climate by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, adapting to the consequences of climate change, and financing these measures.
The Paris Agreement was adopted at the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21) in December 2015 in Paris and entered into force in November 2016. The Parties agreed to limit global warming to well below 2 °C and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C compared with pre-industrial levels.
Climate change mitigation scenarios use scientific assumptions to convey possible future paths. As part of the CATS project, UBA is working with IIASA to develop its own global climate change mitigation scenarios using the open-source model “MESSAGEix.” The goal is to provide targeted analyses, promote transparency, and examine the social and technological aspects of international climate policy.
Every five years the Global Stocktake (GST) evaluates the progress in global climate action. It is the core element of the ambition mechanism of the Paris Agreement, according to which new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) need to be more ambitious than previous ones. The results of the GST are to set the direction of the new NDCs. An UBA project analyses how the GST is reflected in NDCs.
What do people mean when they talk about the “1.5°C goal” in the context of climate change? What is the origin of this value and how is it quantified? What happens if we exceed it – is there any way back down below a global warming of 1.5°C? In this text, we look at the emergence of the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement and explain why we need to keep it within reach.
Every five years the Parties to the Paris Agreement have to submit new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). In 2023 Parties agreed that the new NDCs should be aligned with the 1.5 degrees climate target. However, with the NDCs submitted in 2025, the world is heading for a global warming of 2.3 to 2.5 degrees by the end of the century.
Without freight transport shop shelves would be empty, and the economy would grind to a halt. But transporting goods and waste generates noise, air pollutants and greenhouse gases. To counter this the UBA in its vision for 2045 recommends to shift transports to trains and inland shipping while electrifying lorries and ships and avoiding goods transport altogether whenever possible.
As part of an in-house research project, UBA is working on the use and further development of an integrated assessment model (IAM) developed by the independent research institute IIASA. IAMs combine economic, social and ecological aspects for the development of climate action scenarios and are central to the IPCC process. The cooperation between UBA and IIASA is now official.
