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It is well understood that human-caused climate change is causing sea levels to rise around the world.

Since 1901, global sea levels have risen by at least 20cm – accelerating from around 1mm a year for much of the 20th century to 4mm a year over 2006-18. 

Sea level rise has significant environmental and social consequences, including coastal erosion, damage to buildings and transport infrastructure, loss of livelihoods and ecosystems.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said it is “virtually certain” that sea level will continue to rise during the current century and beyond.

But what is less clear is exactly how quickly sea levels could climb over the coming decades.

This is largely due to challenges in calculating the rate at which land ice in Antarctica – the world’s largest store of frozen freshwater – could melt.

In this article, we unpack some of the reasons why projecting the speed and scale of future sea level rise is difficult.

Drivers of sea level rise

There are three principal components of sea level rise.

First, as the ocean warms, water expands. This process is known as thermal expansion, a comparatively straightforward physical process

Second, more water gets added to the oceans when the ice contained in glaciers and ice sheets on land melts and flows into the sea.

Third, changes in rainfall and evaporation – as well as the extraction of groundwater for drinking and irrigation, drainage of wetlands and construction of reservoirs – affect how much water is stored on land.

In its sixth assessment cycle (AR6), the IPCC noted that thermal expansion and melting land ice contributed almost equally to sea level rise over the past century. Changes in land water storage, on the other hand, played a minor role. 

However, the balance between these three drivers is shifting.

The IPCC projects that the contribution of melting land ice – already the largest contributor to sea level rise – will increase over the coming decade as the world continues to warm. 

The lion’s share of the Earth’s remaining land ice – 88% – is in Antarctica, with Greenland accounting for almost all of the rest. (Mountain glaciers in the Himalaya, Alps and other regions collectively account for less than 1% of total land ice.)

However, it is difficult to project exactly how much Antarctic ice will make its way into the sea between now and 2100.

As a result, IPCC projections cover a large range of outcomes for future sea level rise.

In AR6, the IPCC said sea levels would “likely” be between 44-76cm higher by 2100 than the 1995-2014 average under a medium-emissions scenario. However, it noted that sea level rise above this range could not be ruled out due to “deep uncertainty linked to ice sheet processes”.

The chart below illustrates the wide range of sea level rise projected by the IPCC under different warming scenarios (coloured lines) as well as a possible – but unlikely – worst-case scenario (dotted line).

The shaded areas represent the “likely range” of sea level rise under each warming scenario, calculated by analysing processes that are already well understood. The worst-case scenario dotted line represents a future where various poorly understood processes combine to lead to a very rapid increase in sea levels.

The graph shows that sea level rise increases with warming – and would climb most sharply under the “low-likelihood, high-impact” pathway.

Projections of global sea level rise
Projections of global sea level rise in very high (dark red), high (red), intermediate (orange), low (dark blue) and very low (light blue) warming scenarios, based on IPCC projections. The shaded areas represent the “likely range” of sea level rise, which only takes into account processes that are already well understood. The dotted line represents a worst-case scenario where various poorly understood processes combine. Adapted from IPCC (2023)

Retreat of glacier grounding lines

In Antarctica, the melting of ice on the surface of glaciers is limited. In many locations, warmer temperatures are leading to increases in snowfall and greater snow accumulation, which means the surface of the ice is continuously gaining mass.

Most of Antarctica’s contribution to global sea level rise is, therefore, not linked to ice melt at the surface. Instead, it occurs when giant glaciers push from land into the sea, propelled downhill by gravity and their own immense weight.

These huge masses of ice first grind downhill across the land and then along the seafloor. Eventually, they detach from the bedrock and start to float.

These floating ice shelves then largely melt from below, as warm ocean water intrudes into cavities on its underside. This is known as “basal melting”.

The boundary between grounded and floating ice is known as the “grounding line”.

In many regions of Antarctica, grounding lines typically sit at the high point of the bedrock, with the ice sheet deepening inland. This is illustrated in the graphic below.

Illustration of an Antarctic ice sheet, showing the grounding line where grounded ice transitions to floating ice, and how warm ocean water intrudes beneath the ice shelf, melting it from below.
Illustration of an Antarctic ice sheet, showing the grounding line where grounded ice transitions to floating ice, and how warm ocean water intrudes beneath the ice shelf, melting it from below. Credit: Freya Sykes, iC3.

When a grounding line is at a high point of the bedrock, it acts as a block which limits the area of ice exposed to basal melting.

However, if the grounding line retreats further inland, warm water could “spill” over the high point in the bedrock and carve out large cavities below the ice. This could dramatically accelerate the retreat of grounding lines further inland across Antarctica.

There is evidence to suggest that the retreat of grounding lines might cause a runaway effect, in which each successive retreat causes the ice behind the line to detach from the land even more quickly.

Recent climate modelling suggests that many grounding lines are not yet in runaway retreat – but some regions of Antarctica are close enough to thresholds that tiny increases in basal melting push model runs toward very different outcomes. 

Whether – and to what extent – grounding lines might retreat will depend on a wide range of factors, including the exact shape of the bedrock beneath the ice. However, the bedrock on the coast of Antarctica has not yet been precisely mapped in many places.

Ice shelves

Once Antarctic ice detaches from the seabed, it floats on the ocean surface. These floating ice shelves slow the flow of ice from land towards the sea, acting as a brake as they wedge between headlands and little hills on the seafloor.

If these ice shelves break apart, the flow of glaciers towards the sea can accelerate.

The image below on the left shows a present-day ice shelf that is pinned in place by bedrock, which slows the flow of the ice into the sea.

The image on the right shows a future scenario in which ocean water continues to intrude under the ice, accelerating basal melting on the underside of the floating ice until it completely detaches from the “pinning point” that had previously held it in place.

In this scenario, the bedrock is no longer acting as a break on glaciers pushing to the sea and the ice shelf starts flowing into the sea more quickly and begins breaking up. Ice masses inland then begin to push more rapidly towards the sea.

Illustration of an Antarctic ice shelf. On the left, the ice is being held in place by a “pinning point” – a bump in the bedrock which temporarily acts as an anchor.
Illustration of an Antarctic ice shelf. On the left, the ice is being held in place by a “pinning point” – a bump in the bedrock which temporarily acts as an anchor. On the right, the ice shelf has detached from the pinning point, meaning that both the ice shelf and the masses of ice piled up behind it start flowing into the sea more rapidly. Credit: Freya Sykes, iC3.

This dynamic was directly observed during the collapse of the Larsen-B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula in 2002, which led to accelerated glacial ice flow and is believed to have contributed to a dramatic glacial retreat two decades later.

However, the factors affecting the stability of the floating ice shelves around Antarctica’s coast are complex. The strength of ice shelves depends on their thickness, how and where they are pinned to the seafloor, how cracks grow, as well as air and sea temperatures and levels of snow and rainfall. For example, meltwater at the surface can lever cracks further apart, in a process known as hydrofracturing

A 2024 review of the stability of ice shelves found big gaps in scientific understanding of these processes. There is currently no scientific consensus on how rapidly various ice shelves might collapse – the pace is likely to vary greatly from one ice shelf to the next.

Ice-cliff collapse

If, and when, ice shelves collapse and drift away from the coast, they will expose the towering ice cliffs that loom behind them directly to the sea. These ice cliffs can be more than 100 metres tall.

This exposure could potentially lead to those cliffs to become structurally unstable and collapse in a runaway process – further accelerating the advance of the glaciers pushing towards the sea. 

The images below illustrate how such a collapse might unfold. In the top image, a floating ice shelf buttresses the ice masses behind it. In the middle image, the ice shelf has largely broken apart and melted into the sea. In the bottom image, the ice shelf has completely disappeared, leaving a steep wall of ice towering over the sea. At this point, the exposed cliffs might collapse and crash into the water below.

Progressive disintegration of ice shelves over time (top and middle) may leave ice cliffs exposed
Progressive disintegration of ice shelves over time (top and middle) may leave ice cliffs exposed (bottom image). These tall cliffs might collapse and fall directly into the sea. Image credit: Freya Sykes, iC3.

Researchers are still debating whether or not this “marine ice cliff instability” is likely to happen this century.

Modelling ocean dynamics

The speed at which grounding lines retreat, ice shelves collapse and ice cliffs cascade into the sea partially depends on complex ocean dynamics.

The temperature and speed of water intrusion underneath the ice depends on multiple factors, including ocean currents, winds, sea ice, underwater ridges and eddies. These factors vary from one location to the next and can vary by season and by year

Once water reaches a given cavity, the ways in which turbulent flows and fresh meltwater plumes meet the ice can significantly affect melt levels – further complicating the picture.

In other words, predicting future melt depends on models that integrate macro-level ocean circulation with local-level turbulence. This remains a major modelling challenge that, despite ongoing progress, is unlikely to be conclusively resolved any time soon. 

Planning for future sea level rise

Scientists agree that human-caused climate change is causing sea levels to rise and that the oceans will continue to rise during the current century and far beyond.

However, the combination of the complexity of modelling ice-ocean interactions and the threat of potential runaway processes means that, for the foreseeable future, there is considerable uncertainty about the magnitude of future sea level rise.

(While this article focuses on Antarctica, it is worth noting that Greenland’s contribution to future sea level rise is also highly uncertain.)

To complicate matters further, the ocean does not rise like water in a bathtub, creeping up equally on all sides. Instead the Earth’s surface is highly dynamic.

For example, during the last ice age, the immense mass of the glaciers that covered much of northern Europe pressed the Earth’s surface downwards. Even though most of that ice disappeared millennia ago, much of Scandinavia is still rebounding today, causing the land to rise gradually. 

In contrast, the city of Jakarta in Indonesia is sinking at a rapid pace of 10cm per year due to sprawling urbanisation and extraction of groundwater for household and industrial uses. That rate may increase or decrease over the coming decades, depending on urban planning and water management decisions. 

This mix of natural and human-driven factors means that, even if researchers could perfectly predict average global sea level rise, calculating how much the sea will rise in any given location will remain challenging. 

Another key unknown is around future levels of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions which drive climate change

The scientific community is working to better understand the dynamics driving sea level rise and improve predictions, including through Antarctic sea bed mapping, field observations and improved models. Those advances in knowledge will not erase uncertainty, but they could reduce the range of possible outcomes. 

Nevertheless, while that range may narrow, it will not completely disappear.

Plans drawn up by policymakers and engineers to prepare society for future sea level rise should never be based on a single point estimate.

Instead, they should take into account a range of possible “likely” outcomes – and include contingency plans for less likely, but entirely possible, scenarios in which the oceans rise far faster than currently expected.

The post Guest post: The challenges in projecting future global sea levels appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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As fires burn and temperatures soar, it’s time to imagine a world beyond GDP

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Steven Stone is acting director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Office of Science

In 1934, American economist Simon Kuznets presented a paper to Congress advocating for a new way of measuring economic performance.

The United States was reeling from the Great Depression, and Kuznets – a future Novel prize winner – wanted to gauge just how badly the country’s economy had been dented.

His metric, which would come to be known as gross domestic product (GDP), was a breakthrough. But as pioneering as it was, Kuznets saw its limitations.

“The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income,” he wrote in the 1934 paper.

Some nine decades on, we have largely forgotten that message. GDP has become a barometer of economic progress, a kind of one-number-that-rules-them-all upon which national policies turn and governments rise and fall.

With the climate crisis deepening by the day – as evidenced by the heatwaves and wildfires now searing Europe – our attachment to GDP is looking like a problem.

In a single-minded pursuit of GDP growth, humanity is inadvertently feeding several environmental crises that, over the long run, threaten to make most of us poorer, sicker and more miserable. Climate change alone could slice 20 per cent off global GDP by 2100 – a staggering number.

Clear-cutting boosts GDP not wealth

We need to broaden our vision and definition of economic success before it’s too late.

I grew up in the 1970s and 80s surrounded by the mixed hardwood forests of the northeastern United States. For me, the trees were a refuge, a place to run, discover and savor the history and mystery of the land and its people.

Those experiences with my friends were more important than the amount of money in my pocket. And they led to a realization early on in my career as an economist: that wealth is about more than just income.

This is one of GDP’s most significant oversights.

With every forest we clear cut and every ounce of fossil fuel we burn, GDP rises. But through those actions, we are whittling away at the natural world, which supplies us with food, water, medicine, clean air and countless other essentials.

    By focusing only on GDP, we’re ignoring what’s happening to the natural assets on which our prosperity ultimately depends. It’s like we’re driving a car and only looking at the speedometer, not the energy remaining in the battery.

    That is the difference between measuring income versus measuring wealth.

    The answer to this dilemma lies in looking beyond GDP. We must start considering a broader range of indicators when making policy decisions.

    From an environmental perspective, that means measuring and valuing natural assets like forests, water, soil, biodiversity and clean air. By assigning a value to nature, decision-makers can better understand the economic consequences of, say, strip-mining a mountain top or letting plastic waste overwhelm a river.

    There is still some debate over how exactly to do this kind of natural capital accounting. But that’s not a reason to dismiss it, as many have done. It took years of refinement to end up with the GDP formula we have today.

    Costa Rica’s example

    The idea of looking beyond GDP isn’t only a theoretical debate. Countries and communities around the world have started to make economic decisions based on their natural assets. A prime example is Costa Rica, a biodiversity hotspot where a years-long effort to conserve land and seascapes has led to a boom in tourism. That in part helped elevate the country into the club of high-income nations.

    This kind of environmentally focused economic decision making can pay huge dividends. By stabilizing the climate, ending pollution and halting the loss of the natural world, humanity could save millions of lives a year and create US$20 trillion in economic benefits annually by 2070, found the Global Environment Outlook 7, a 2025 report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report was funded by the European Union among others.

    I began my career as an economist before moving to UNEP, which focuses on solving the world’s thorniest environmental problems. During that time, I’ve come to appreciate that “wealth” means more than simply “income.” True prosperity means being able to provide for ourselves now and into the future. Anything short of that is an empty kind of affluence – and ultimately doomed to be short-lived.

    As deadly heat blankets our cities, species slip into extinction and the planet struggles with rising toxicity and pollution, I am convinced that we can do better at measuring what matters. And that means updating and expanding how we measure economic progress.

    The post As fires burn and temperatures soar, it’s time to imagine a world beyond GDP appeared first on Climate Home News.

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    When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño

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    Amira Odeh Quiñones is a hydrologist and Caribbean organiser for the 350.org climate campaign group

    El Niño, likely to be one of the strongest in modern history, has arrived on Caribbean shores.

    Drought is slowly creeping up on our islands. But unlike the fiery wildfires ravaging parts of Europe, there’s no smoke signalling the damage being done, no sirens to warn of the danger. Only announcements from public health officials to stay indoors and remain hydrated — as if outdoor workers and farming communities have the luxury to heed such advice.

    During El Niño, strong atmospheric winds alter rain patterns and trap heat across the Caribbean. But while we have experienced El Niño many times before, it has become very visible in recent years how climate change is making this natural phenomenon worse.

    Across the Greater Antilles, temperatures are soaring past 38°C (100°F), with real-feel indexes reaching a gruelling 43°C in parts of Puerto Rico where I live. Cuba has it worse. Widespread power outages mean that methods for cooling down are unavailable for most of the day, leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk of heat stroke when temperatures hit 38°C.

    Santa Marta coalition tested as co-chair Colombia turns back to fossil fuels

    During the last strong drought a decade ago, I had water only two days a week in my home. Today, there are many families whose taps are about to run completely dry. Water authorities have already begun strict rationing in some municipalities, with more on the list scheduled for rationing if conditions don’t change.

    Water rationing is far more than an inconvenience; it is an immediate health risk. This means thousands of people need to constantly haul heavy buckets up flights of stairs just so they could bathe, cook, stay hydrated – the basics of survival.

    Heat causes health problems

    Puerto Rico is home to roughly 300,000 elderly residents. Many live alone, isolated and without support. They risk severe physical injury when carrying heavy water containers, and are wont to suffer from silent heat exhaustion in unventilated rooms.

    Furthermore, when water shortages force residents to store water in open household containers, it inadvertently creates breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Paired with scorching temperatures that tend to shorten the mosquito breeding cycle, the region is facing explosive outbreaks of dengue fever that endanger our most vulnerable: children and the elderly.

    The economic fallout is equally devastating. Dry fields mean millions of dollars in lost crops, forcing small agricultural businesses to collapse, needing urgent government relief to survive. Extreme fuel shortages have already paralyzed Cuba’s agricultural sector, cutting food output by 60% – the El Niño dry spell threatens to decimate it.

    At sea, warmer ocean waters fuel massive influxes of sargassum seaweed. Rotting sargassum chokes our beaches, destroying the local tourism industry that so many working families rely on. Tangled seaweed also damages nets and boat engines, slashing fish catches and driving up equipment costs for local fishers.

    In the south of Puerto Rico, the coastal town of La Parguera is currently witnessing a historic amount of sargassum on its shores. This has halted most of the boating activity in the area, which is the seaside town’s main tourist draw and economic driver.

    All over the Caribbean, from town halls to local group gatherings, the story I hear is always the same: constant headaches, lost work hours, failing health, and a sense that quality of life is silently being stolen. The compounding effects of heatwaves, drought, and marine destruction are exhausting our people, our islands.

    Climate change to blame

    Climate change makes each El Niño year hotter and more damaging. Higher baseline global temperatures increase the energy and moisture available for extreme weather. Latest projections show that El Niño may push the monthly global average temperature past 2°C of warming for the first time in early 2027. In the Caribbean islands, that will not just be breaking records – it’ll be breaking lives.

    Recently, I had the opportunity to share a panel with climate scientists behind what is known as the field of “attribution science” – or the science that compares today’s climate conditions to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels. They’re unequivocal: it’s no longer a question of whether extreme weather is caused by climate change, it’s just a question of how much.

      Attribution science recently got a boost from the U.S.’ top scientific advisory body. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recognized that researchers’ methods have advanced considerably in recent years, resulting in better assessments on how much extreme weather can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It noted that attribution findings could be relevant in some types of legal cases, including those seeking damages from oil companies for climate impacts.

      This crisis, which is already taking a heavy toll on our communities’ survival, needs real, urgent, and structural action that goes beyond aid. With similar droughts now gripping parts of Asia and Africa, we’re falling into the familiar narrative of treating the looming humanitarian crisis as if no one was to blame, as if it is being caused solely by a natural phenomenon we can’t control.

      It’s not. The world was already on fire before its regular visitor, El Niño, came. While we need humanitarian action, we need climate action too, in order to permanently put out the flames.

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      Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?

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      China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.

      The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period.

      These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy.

      There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions

      China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.

      The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.

      Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.

      Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.

      What does the climate plan cover?

      The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.

      The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change.

      For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A.

      They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.

      China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period.

      Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.

      She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.

      In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels.

      Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”.

      The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.

      Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity.

      Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.

      These include:

      • Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
      • Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
      • Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
      • Strengthening climate adaptation
      • Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech

      What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?

      The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.

      The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.

      The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP). 

      She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects.

      She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030.

      The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”.

      In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.

      According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).

      Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.

      Methane is China’s main source of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions by gas, MtCO2e. Stacked bar chart from 2005 to 2021 showing total emissions rising to over 2,700 MtCO2e. Methane consistently accounts for the largest share, followed by Nitrous Oxide and F-gases. Source: iGDP analysis of China’s first Biennial Transparency Report and fourth Biennial Update Report - (alt text generated by Google Gemini)
      iGDP analysis of China’s first Biennial Transparency Report and fourth Biennial Update Report.

      China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.

      The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.

      For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.

      What does the plan say about global climate governance?

      One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.

      By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area.

      It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.

      China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.

      Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.

      Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets.

      The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.

      Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.

      Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses.

      The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds.

      The post Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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