Comparison of Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 pledges under the Cancún Agreements

It finds that there is broad agreement that developing country pledges amount to more mitigation than developed country pledges, despite the diversity of assumptions and methodologies employed in the studies and the substantial differences in their quantification of the pledges.

The studies further note that the mitigation pledged globally is consistent with a global temperature rise of greater than 2°C – and possibly as much as 5°C. Avoiding this much warming would require developed countries to raise their pledges to the levels required by science and equity, and fulfill those ambitions through actual mitigation.

While this report concludes that developed country pledges are not high enough, it does not conversely imply that developing country pledges are too high. If the appropriate international institutions of technological cooperation and financial support were put in place, developing countries could also fulfill higher levels of ambition, consistent with keeping warming below 2°C or 1.5°C.

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Note: This paper was originally published in June 2011 as SEI-US Working Paper WP-US-1107. For a summary of the key findings, download this policy brief.

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