The development of Long Term Climate Mitigation Targets

In our fight against climate change, parties that have signed the Paris Agreement are obliged to formulate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and Long-Term strategies for greenhouse-gas emissions reductions (LTS) that detail and communicate how countries will mitigate and adapt to climate change. However, in order to address a global challenge such as climate change, a global network is needed. Such networks will allow countries to share their learnings and cooperate in the development of capacities at the individual, organisational and societal levels among international decision-makers. And this is exactly the intent of the upcoming modelling workshop in Mexico City on October 16^th & 17^th 2019.

Jointly-hosted by the European Commission and INECC in Mexico, this meeting will be attended by INECC, European Commissions Joint Research Centre, European Commissions Directorate-General for Climate Action, the Mexican Ministry of Environment and numerous modellers from various Mexican institutes. At this meeting, the experiences of the European Union and the Republic of Mexico in the use of models in producing national visions and strategies will be shared.

Models are an essential tool in connecting the NDCs and LTSs with the objective of the Paris Agreement – and specifically GLOBIOM, GAINS and MESSAGE models as they are based on solid data and can account for the common but differentiated responsibilities of each individual Party. Models and other analytical tools are essential for exploring the impacts of international climate policy, given the complex relationships between climate policy and mitigation measures, economic activities, the energy system, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, land use, and, finally, the induced climate changes. Also, with the recently increased attention for the scientific underpinning of climate change implies that high quality and transparent analysis that takes different uncertainties into account is needed. At this meeting, IIASA will be represented by Nicklas Forsell from ESM, Peter Rafaj from AIR and Volker Krey from ENE who will be sharing about GLOBIOM, GAINS and MESSAGE respectively.

This meeting aims to increase knowledge of technical capabilities in the region, to discuss how models and researchers can contribute to the development of national plans and explore possible areas of cooperation between the European Union and Mexico.

Last edited: 10 October 2019