Thomas Hahn is associate professor at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Stockholm University research leader for FAIRTRANS. Robert Höglund is a carbon removal advisor with Marginal Carbon. Mikael Karlsson is associate professor at Uppsala University and research leader for FAIRTRANS.
Recent news articles, in the Guardian and from Bloomberg among others, have proclaimed the death of the 1.5°C target given how emissions and lack of sharper commitments are developing. In a new study, in Nature Communications we examine how the responsibility to limit long-term warming to 1.5°C could be allocated after a temporary overshoot, if countries are held accountable in line with the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibility and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) as established under the UNFCCC.
This principle, a cornerstone of climate diplomacy, recognizes that while all countries share responsibility for addressing climate change, their obligations differ based on historical emissions and capacity to act. By comparing countries’ past emissions and future emission claims with their equal cumulative per capita emissions, we establish a new indicator – “additional carbon accountability” – showing countries’ responsibilities beyond current climate targets.
If existing national climate targets are met, the 1.5°C fossil carbon budget (for a 50% probability of meeting that goal) will be exceeded with 576 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO₂). To meet the 1.5°C target, our indicator shows that the EU, China, the US, and 15 other countries must sharpen their own current targets with faster mitigation and more carbon dioxide removal (CDR), such as afforestation and technical solutions like direct air capture and biochar. All other countries must stick to their national climate plans (nationally determined contributions – NDCs) and net-zero targets.
Counting future emissions
As an example, the EU would need to mitigate or remove an additional 48 GtCO₂ or finance additional reductions beyond current targets in other countries, on top of reaching its own targets in terms of the NDC for 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. For China, the additional carbon accountability is 150 GtCO₂ and for the USA 167 GtCO₂.
While there is no international agreement on how to operationalize the fairness principles of the Paris Agreement, the new indicator – based on the CBDR-RC – provides an important tool to clarify what different countries are accountable for in relation to the mitigation (emissions) gap. This information feeds directly into the contested annual negotiations on climate financing within the UNFCCC COP meetings.
In general, high-income countries have large carbon debts, while several of the BRICS and upper-middle-income countries have high planned future emissions. Much focus of climate advocacy has been on getting high-income countries to reduce their emissions. Of planned future emissions, 26% come from high-income countries, but as much as 38% comes from upper-middle-income countries with an additional carbon accountability.
China and Iran, for example, have plans for large future emissions and could theoretically meet a large part of their accountability by achieving stricter reduction targets. But countries that have most of their emissions in the past, like the US and the EU, need to turn to not only stricter targets but also CDR, ensuring net negative outcomes.
National responsibility
Unlike the COP29 outcome on financing, which hinges on the division between developed and developing countries, our indicator assigns responsibility to individual countries based on their additional carbon accountability. This approach bypasses the debate over whether only developed countries should collectively finance emissions reductions in developing countries, instead focusing solely on national accountability for emissions.
In the article, we also calculate what it would cost to meet the accountability with CDR or reductions if the cost is $150 per tonne of carbon dioxide. For Iran, the total additional carbon accountability cost would be 1,200% of its GDP in 2021, Russia 530%, China 130%, the US 110%, and the EU 41%.
Our article points to how the responsibility to stay under 1.5°C in the long term could be allocated in line with the CBDR-RC principle. But will countries shoulder this responsibility?
Political will in short supply
For most high-income countries, the focus in practice is more on meeting existing targets, with the topic of paying for historic carbon debt absent. There is also no agreement among countries on how to operationalize the CBDR-RC principle. And few would expect countries like Russia and Iran to make radical emissions reduction cuts, not to mention taking any responsibility for historic emissions.
Hence, it does not seem very likely from the current political situation that countries would increase the ambitions of their national climate plans and net zero targets enough to meet their additional carbon accountability. However, what seems unlikely today can change.
Moreover, every fraction of a degree matters, and our indicator can be used also for other temperature targets, such as 1.7°C or 2.0°C. Our results can be used to put higher pressure on individual countries with plans for large future emissions and to start holding countries with large carbon debts accountable for their historic emissions.
Dr. Ingo Fetzer, a researcher on global systems analyses with the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and Dr. Johannes Morfeldt, a researcher in climate and energy systems at Chalmers University of Technology also contributed to this article.
The post How to resuscitate 1.5°C by identifying accountable countries appeared first on Climate Home News.
How to resuscitate 1.5°C by identifying accountable countries
Virtual power plants see a renewed push in the legislature to weather the state’s “mid-transition.”
SACRAMENTO—Not long into Ellie Cohen’s opening remarks at the California Climate Policy Summit this week, the crowd erupted in boos—at her request.
California’s Climate Leaders Talk Clean Energy Growing Pains and the War on Iran
The Bronx River is home to obsolete dams. Plans to remove them could boost efforts to restore dwindling river herring populations.
The Bronx River was once a curvy waterway that ran through vast forests and flowed into networks of tidal marshland. For centuries, river herring have swum up the waterway from the East River and the Long Island Sound to lay their eggs.
Dam Useless: Barriers Prevent a Migratory Fish from Reproducing
Cecilia Requena is a Bolivian senator with Parliamentarians for a Fossil Free Future and Juan Pablo Osornio is engagement and policy director at Earth Insight.
In late April, delegations from dozens of governments will gather in Colombia for the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. Together with the roadmaps announced at November’s UN climate summit in Brazil, which will call on countries to transition away from fossil fuels and halt deforestation by 2030, political will is building to save our most critical natural resources.
Now we need the practical application of where and how this will work – specific places where the line is drawn against new fossil fuel extraction. That is what Fossil Free Zones offer.
What is a Fossil Free Zone?
A Fossil Free Zone is a defined area demarcated by its ecological, biodiversity, or cultural significance, where exploration, extraction, and development of fossil fuels are permanently prohibited. Think tropical rainforests, key biodiversity areas, Indigenous Peoples’ territories, and critical marine ecosystems. They translate the abstract global commitment to transitioning away from fossil fuels into something tangible: a map, a boundary, a legal safeguard.
The stakes for getting this right are enormous. Research shows that oil and gas blocks already overlap with approximately 179 million hectares of tropical moist forests – roughly 21% of the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asian forest cover.
Globally, almost 27% of global conventional oil resources overlap with top-priority socio-environmental areas. In 2024 alone, 85% of new oil discoveries were made offshore, frequently overlapping with marine biodiversity hotspots.
Colombia: A model for the world
No country illustrates the possibilities better than Colombia – fittingly, the nation hosting this conference (along with the Netherlands). Last September, Colombia announced a landmark ban on fossil fuel and mining extraction across its entire Amazon region – the world’s first region-wide Fossil Free Zone of its kind.
Colombia’s decision followed in the wake of our new research, which found that developing untapped reserves beneath the country’s forest would generate billions of dollars in stranded assets while doing almost nothing for national energy security. It would, however, threaten 20% of the intact Amazon forest and the territories of nearly 70% of the Indigenous and local communities whose lands overlap with fossil fuel concessions. In most of the Colombian Amazon, the cost of extraction is higher than the cost of conservation.
How a global roadmap can meet the promise to halt deforestation
Other countries are also taking steps in this direction. Mexico has 100 million hectares of similar Safeguard Zones, Guatemala ended oil extraction in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve, and parliamentarians across the Amazon basin have introduced legislation to extend the ban region-wide.
The economic case for leaving fossil fuels in the ground
The fossil fuel endgame – a period of declining global demand as renewable energy scales – means that unconventional and frontier reserves in remote forests are increasingly uncompetitive. They require massive public investment in infrastructure, including roads that themselves become vectors for illegal logging, small-scale mining, and agricultural encroachment. Stranded asset risk is real and growing.
In 2025, wind and solar growth outpaced all new electricity demand, and more than a quarter of all vehicles sold were electric.
For forested nations, there is also an emerging economic logic for protection: intact forests generate jobs and revenue from protected area management, watershed services, and sustainable tourism, while supporting the small-scale agriculture that most rural economies depend on. They also underpin water security for agriculture and energy generation and act as carbon sinks. Over 33 million people are employed directly in the forest sector, and there are more than 1.6 billion small forest farm producers.
Fossil fuel investment amid volatile energy markets
Developing countries with fossil fuel reserves face genuine pressures to develop them – credit ratings, currency stability, social services, and energy security are tied to an ever-growing fossil frontier, particularly in the midst of volatile energy markets.
The conflict in Iran has amplified that volatility, spiking oil prices and giving fossil fuel-dependent governments renewed short-term pressure to expand domestic production – making the case for internationally-backed Fossil Free Zones, paired with real financial support, all the more urgent.
Innovative financial mechanisms like the Tropical Forest Forever Facility – a fund proposed at COP30 that would provide long-term, results-based payments to tropical forest nations to keep forests standing – can shift the economic scales enough to make Fossil Free Zones in high-integrity forests politically viable.
Colombia pledges to exit investment protection system after fossil fuel lawsuits
Industries leading the energy transition – renewable energy developers, green hydrogen producers, sustainable finance institutions, and technology companies with net-zero supply chain commitments – also have a direct stake in the Fossil Free Zone agenda. Moreover, the reputational and legal risks of investments in fossil fuel frontiers are escalating.
Already, 11 banks have applied various levels of financial restrictions to the oil and gas sector in the Amazon. Some of these policies are strong, others are closer to greenwashing, but these commitments prove that banks see the increasing risks.
What should emerge from Colombia conference
Our hope for the upcoming conference in Colombia is that, at a minimum, Fossil Free Zones are uplifted as part of a shared international vision for the energy transition. At best, a coalition of countries commits to include Fossil Free Zones in their national plans and establishes a shared framework with principles to identify new zones and implementation guidance for other countries.
WATCH OUR WEBINAR: Santa Marta – Fossil fuel transition in an unstable world
This is a practical on-ramp for countries that want to align with the global transition but need a concrete, geographically-defined starting point – and as a direct delivery mechanism for the deforestation roadmap, translating a global pledge to halt forest loss into specific action to thwart a real driver of deforestation.
The question is no longer whether fossil fuel extraction will end, but whether that end will be managed or chaotic, putting the planet’s most critical ecosystems in danger. Fossil Free Zones offer a hope of preventing irreversible harm to the forests, marine ecosystems, and Indigenous communities that represent humanity’s best remaining insurance against climate collapse – one territory at a time.
The post Fossil Free Zones can be on-ramps to the clean energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.
Fossil Free Zones can be on-ramps to the clean energy transition
Humans Just Flew Around the Moon This Week. But Would Babies Born There Ever Truly Feel Gravity? Ask Jellyfish Babies.
California’s Climate Leaders Talk Clean Energy Growing Pains and the War on Iran
Dam Useless: Barriers Prevent a Migratory Fish from Reproducing
-
Climate Change8 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases8 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Renewable Energy6 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits