Climate goals and sustainable development

The Stockholm Environment Institute argues that the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement should encourage countries to set separate emission reduction targets for different substances in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) rather than using a single CO2 equivalent (CO2e) pledge.

• The use of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) pledges is viewed as a barrier to achieving the Paris Agreement's goal of keeping warming well below 2C and supporting sustainable development. Using CO2e suggests that reductions in CO2 and short-lived emissions are interchangeable, whereas they are actually complementary. Furthermore, CO2e obscures differences in how substances behave in the atmosphere, their duration, and their non-warming effects.
• Setting separate pledges for different substances would demonstrate that countries do not have to choose between long-term climate goals and near-term sustainable development priorities. Specifically, reducing methane provides a triple benefit by reducing tropospheric ozone, which otherwise harms human health, reduces crop yields, and suppresses the carbon sequestration ability of terrestrial ecosystems.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2016). Climate goals and sustainable development. https://www.sei.org/perspectives/climate-goals-sustainable-development/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Climate goals and sustainable development. 2016. https://www.sei.org/perspectives/climate-goals-sustainable-development/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Climate goals and sustainable development |date=16 May 2016 |url=https://www.sei.org/perspectives/climate-goals-sustainable-development/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2016climate, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Climate goals and sustainable development}}, publisher = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2016}, month = may, url = {https://www.sei.org/perspectives/climate-goals-sustainable-development/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }