MONTHLY NEWSLETTER MARCH 2018
Woods Hole Research Center Accelerating progress under the Paris agreement Dr. Philip B. Duffy President & Executive Director The Paris climate agreement is humanity’s process for controlling global climate change. Reaching the agreement was an unprecedented diplomatic achievement, but as I (and others) have said ad nauseum, the ultimate success of the agreement will depend on how effectively we all work to implement it.
Unfortunately, right now we’re not getting the job done. Specifically, the initial emissions-reduction commitments made under the Paris agreement do not put humanity on course to meet the main goal of that agreement: limiting global warming to 1.5° or 2° C. These commitments allow enough CO2 to be added to the atmosphere before 2030 that no conceivable future emissions reductions would be enough to prevent unacceptable harms from climate change. The designers of the agreement wisely anticipated this eventuality, and built in a mechanism for governments to periodically make new and more ambitious commitments. It’s critically important to do everything possible to use this vehicle for “increased ambition” to get global greenhouse gas emissions on the right track. For this reason, WHRC is increasingly focusing on work that contributes directly to meeting Paris goals. This refocusing took a big step forward last month with the signing of an agreement between WHRC and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The main focus of the new partnership will be to work with national country governments to accelerate Paris progress. Specifically, we will help governments to implement commitments they have already made, to design new and more ambitious commitments, and to measure progress towards
meeting their commitments. Our work will have an important academic aspect as well, which is to assess which policies work best in the real world at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and at supporting economic progress. This understanding will directly facilitate the design of better policies - by us and others.
Successful partnerships are often based on strong personal relationships, and in this respect WHRC’s new partnership with Fletcher’s Center for International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP) has great promise. CIERPs director, Kelly Gallagher, is a protégé of two senior leaders at WHRC, John Holdren and Bill Moomaw (who is WHRC’s chair and who founded CIERP and ran it until 2013). Kelly is also a former colleague of mine at the White House, and is a true unsung hero of climate action, who led secret discussions with China that were pivotal in making the Paris agreement possible. I loved working with Kelly in Washington and look forward to working with her and colleagues here.
My enthusiasm about this partnership comes down to one word: impact. At WHRC we seek to have an outsized impact on the trajectory of climate change, and this new relationship is a chance to do exactly that. It’s exciting to have this partnership in place, but now comes the hard part. Thanks as always for your interest and support.
WHRC is an independent research institute where scientists investigate the causes and effects of climate change to identify and implement opportunities for conservation, restoration and economic development around the globe. In June 2016, WHRC was ranked as the top independent climate change think tank in the world for the third year in a row. Learn more at www.whrc.org.