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Commitment-Failures Are Unlikely to Undermine Public Support for the Paris Agreement.

ABSTRACT: Success of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which is founded on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), hinges on whether domestic support for international environmental agreements would be undermined if countries that are crucial to the global effort fail to reduce their emissions. Here we find that citizens in China (n = 3000) and the United States (n = 3007) have strong preferences over the design of international climate agreements, and contributions of other countries to the global effort. However, contrary to what standard accounts of international politics would predict, a survey-embedded experiment in which respondents were randomly exposed to different information on other countries' behavior showed that information on other countries failing to reduce their emissions does not undermine support for how international agreements are designed. While other factors still make large emission cuts challenging, these results suggest that the Paris approach per se is not posing a problem.

SUBMITTER: Beiser-McGrath LF

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6420133 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Commitment-Failures Are Unlikely to Undermine Public Support for the Paris Agreement.

Beiser-McGrath Liam F LF Bernaue Thomas T

Nature climate change 20190225 3

Success of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which is founded on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), hinges on whether domestic support for international environmental agreements would be undermined if countries that are crucial to the global effort fail to reduce their emissions. Here we find that citizens in China (n = 3000) and the United States (n = 3007) have strong preferences over the design of international climate agreements, and contributions of other countries to the global effort. Ho ...[more]

PMID: 30886650

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Project description:Backgroundnationally determined contributions (NDCs) serve to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement of staying "well below 2°C", which could also yield substantial health co-benefits in the process. However, existing NDC commitments are inadequate to achieve this goal. Placing health as a key focus of the NDCs could present an opportunity to increase ambition and realise health co-benefits. We modelled scenarios to analyse the health co-benefits of NDCs for the year 2040 for nine representative countries (ie, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, and the USA) that were selected for their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions and their global or regional influence.MethodsModelling the energy, food and agriculture, and transport sectors, and mortality related to risk factors of air pollution, diet, and physical activity, we analysed the health co-benefits of existing NDCs and related policies (ie, the current pathways scenario) for 2040 in nine countries around the world. We compared these health co-benefits with two alternative scenarios, one consistent with the goal of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (ie, the sustainable pathways scenario), and one in line with the sustainable pathways scenario, but also placing health as a central focus of the policies (ie, the health in all climate policies scenario).FindingsCompared with the current pathways scenario, the sustainable pathways scenario resulted in an annual reduction of 1·18 million air pollution-related deaths, 5·86 million diet-related deaths, and 1·15 million deaths due to physical inactivity, across the nine countries, by 2040. Adopting the more ambitious health in all climate policies scenario would result in a further reduction of 462 000 annual deaths attributable to air pollution, 572 000 annual deaths attributable to diet, and 943 000 annual deaths attributable to physical inactivity. These benefits were attributable to the mitigation of direct greenhouse gas emissions and the commensurate actions that reduce exposure to harmful pollutants, as well as improved diets and safe physical activity.InterpretationA greater consideration of health in the NDCs and climate change mitigation policies has the potential to yield considerable health benefits as well as achieve the "well below 2°C" commitment across a range of regional and economic contexts.FundingThis work was in part funded through an unrestricted grant from the Wellcome Trust (award number 209734/Z/17/Z) and supported by an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant (grant number EP/R035288/1).

Dataset Information

Commitment-Failures Are Unlikely to Undermine Public Support for the Paris Agreement.

Publications

Commitment-Failures Are Unlikely to Undermine Public Support for the Paris Agreement.

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