Emission Reduction in A Pandemic Situation

Hi everyone! I am Indri from THINK-Research Team

How is your second week in 2021? I hope you and your family are safe and healthy.

Do you know that we (su-re.co Giftmakers) want to write more blogs or articles about climate change, clean energy, and waste management? So, please give your comments below if you want to know more specific topics. We would try to write it! :D

In this blog, I want to write about some actions to reduce carbon emission. I think you remember that on 12th December, there were some posts about the 5th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. Do you know what the Paris Agreement is? I would give a summary of it.

Source: EESC, 2020

The Paris Agreement is a landmark environmental accord signed by nearly every country in 2015 to address climate change and the negative impacts. This agreement aims to substantially reduce global GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions to limit the global temperature increase to be 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in this century while pursuing means to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees. This deal includes commitments from all major emitting countries to cut their climate-altering pollution. The pact provides a pathway for developed countries to assist developing countries in their climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. The framework was drafted for transparent monitoring, reporting, and assessing climate goals (UNFCCC). As a result, you might find some targets, plans, or pathways for climate change mitigation in many countries. How about Indonesia? Indonesia Government signed the Paris Agreement in New York on 22nd April 2016. Indonesia has a target to reduce emissions by 29% under any effort or business as usual (BAU) by 2030 and can be increased to 41% with international cooperation.

Also, you might find the previous blog about climate change data on this link. You could see some climate modelling to forecast climate condition in the future. It's also interesting to know that the reduction in energy use resulting from COVID 19 could impact the future. We know that there were some lockdown policies in many countries and carbon footprint reduction due to fewer people travels. A few months ago su-re.co had some Instagram posts about #MondayFunFact and #FridayFunFact. One of the contents is the emission reduction during the pandemic situation. You could find the picture below:

The pandemic situation in 2020 is hard for every country. It affects all sectors, such as health, economic, tourism, business, research, etc. However, in the environmental sector, human activities changed and affected energy use and carbon emissions. There was around 8.8% decrease in global CO2 emissions (−1551 Mt CO2) in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. The decrease was mainly due to the ground transportation sector (−18.6%) and domestic (−35.8%) and international aviation (−52.4%). The largest contributions to the global decrease in emissions in 2020 come from ground transportation (−613.3 Mt CO2, 40% of the total decrease and the power sector (−341.4 Mt CO2, 22% of the total decrease with somewhat smaller decreases from the industry sector (−263.5 Mt CO2, 17% of the total decrease and the aviation sector (including domestic aviation and international aviation, −200.8 Mt CO2, 13% of the total decrease) (Nature.com). We might think post-pandemic would be the best time to reset human-environment relationships. So, we could continue reducing emissions in the future.

If you know GEF (Global Environment Facility), you could find some posts about COVID19 mitigation and opportunity. In the research world, we also found some new projects in environment, economic, health, energy, and social sectors to do mitigation, adaptation, and find potential opportunities in this situation. You would find our previous about Covid19 impacts on this link. Don't forget to check our publication and update our THINK projects on THINK page. If you want to contribute to be one of su-re.co giftmakers on various positions, you should check the hiring & internship page. In this uncertainties situation, let's keep moving and shifting forward! Thank you for reading!