UK's independent climate policy advisory body is poised to expand its international outreach efforts ahead of next year's crucial COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow
The UK's independent climate policy advisory body has this week launched a host of new briefing papers setting out the lessons it has learned over the past 12 years in a bid to help catalyse international action ahead of the COP26 Climate Summit.
The latest tranche of work came as the agency officially tweaked its name to the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and unveiled an overhaul and redesign of its logo and website. Formerly known as the Committee on Climate Change, the body said it had simplified its name to align with how it is frequently referred to internationally.
And ahead of next year's critical UN climate change summit, which the UK is set to co-host in Glasgow in 12 months' time, the CCC yesterday published eight insight reports detailing its inception as part of the Climate Change Act 2008, its regular advice on carbon budgets, and also how its influential 2018 report led to the UK's net zero target being adopted by the government.
Although focused on tracking and guiding the UK's climate efforts, the international dimension of climate action is set to be a key facet of the CCC's work over the next year as part of its role in advising the UK government on its preparations for COP26, with the body having been given additional funding to expand its work programme.
CCC committee member Professor Corinne Le Quéré said the new briefings were designed for an international audience and came at an opportune time, with growing numbers of governments - including China, Japan, and South Korea - announcing ambitious net zero targets in recent weeks.
"These are welcome pledges, and they have the potential to become turning points in the race to avoid catastrophic global warming," she wrote in a blog post published yesterday. "But they are still just that: pledges. To be realised they must be backed up by concerted, tangible action over the coming decades, which requires effective climate policies backed by robust governance."
Since the CCC was established in 2008, a growing number of nations have sought to establish independent advisory bodies on climate policy, with France's High Council on Climate - which Le Quéré chairs - having been established in 2018, and New Zealand, Sweden, France, Germany, Mexico, and Denmark among those countries to introduce new advisory and oversight agencies.
Le Quéré said a growing body of international data and experience to aid the development of effective climate policy worldwide was "badly needed" if the world is to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. "Our hope is that [the eight briefings] will provide a useful resource for colleagues around the world who are considering how to deliver objective, evidence-based climate policy," she wrote.
The new reports come ahead of a particularly busy autumn for the CCC, as it gears up to publish its next major advisory report in December on how the UK government should go about meeting its statutory climate targets for 2033-37, also known as the Sixth Carbon Budget.
Updated greenhouse gas emissions projections released today by the government show the UK is currently on course to miss its fourth and fifth carbon budgets for the late 2020s and early 2030s based on current policy, despite trends pointing to a further 24 per cent drop in UK emissions from current levels by 2040 to 344 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
The CCC's upcoming report will provide a detailed assessment of the progress required to meet current medium-term targets and put the UK on track to meet its goal of delivering net zero emissions by 2050. It is set to include new policy advice, insights on how to decarbonise specific sectors of the UK economy, consumer behaviour change, new investment figures, and cost-benefit analysis, as well as specific net zero pathways for Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, the CCC said.
Moreover, the agency will soon offer recommendations to the UK government on the level of ambition that should be included in the UK's climate plan as part of the Paris Agreement, also known as its Nationally-Determined Contribution (NDC) in UN jargon.
Two further reports will accompany the Sixth Carbon Budget advice, it added: one on the role of local authorities in driving climate action, and the other on the role businesses can play, including guidance on the standards and strategies corporates can adopt in support of the net zero transition.
Then in 2021, in addition to greater international engagement, climate risk and adaptation is expected to be a core area of focus, with the CCC's third climate risk assessment due before summer next year, as well as a "renewed scrutiny of government's progress" according to its CEO Chris Stark.
So, building on the Sixth Carbon Advice and CCRA3, we are planning a fresh approach to scrutiny.
— Chris Stark (@ChiefExecCCC) October 27, 2020
This is something we'll develop over the first half of 2021 - and you'll see a refreshed appraisal framework in our bumper progress report next summer - on adaptation and mitigation.