Accelerating Progress on Indonesia's Climate Initiatives

As a follow-up to the urgent call to action contained in August 2021’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and ahead of September’s UN General Assembly, Climate Action Tracker issued its update on the progress being made by countries towards their commitments under the 2015 Paris Accord.

- Chris Wren

As with the IPCC report, it made for equally stark reading concluding that few countries, even those with strong targets, are on track to deliver on the cuts in carbon emissions previously committed. It also noted that, whilst the Paris Accord was framed for countries to evolve and increase their commitments over time, several countries, Indonesia included, have failed to submit more ambitious goals.

We estimate that with current actions global emissions will be at roughly today's level in 2030, we would be emitting twice as much as required for the 1.5 °C limit, the report stated.

As the host country of the upcoming COP26 conference to be held in Glasgow at the end of October, United Kingdom Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, used his address to the UN General Assembly to lay out his goal to secure commitments on “coal, cars, cash and trees” from the world’s leaders when they meet. He noted that “the cost of new green technologies are falling all the time,” adding that “we have the technology and finance to make a big economic success of this agenda. We lack only one thing, and that is time.” Other world leaders also made strong commitments with Chinese President Xi Jinping committing that China will stop funding new coal fired power plants overseas and increase its funding for green and low-carbon energy projects in developing countries, the latter a commitment also echoed by the United States.