Interview: Paris conference can succeed, but climate challenge is huge: Italian experts

As negotiations over a new global climate agreement entered its fourth day in Paris on Thursday, Italian experts wondered whether the spirit of solidarity expressed by some 150 world leaders at the conference would yield concrete results.

Antonello Pasini, a senior climate change scientist at the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research of Italy's National Research Council (CNR), said the Paris discussions over the past few days had surrounded climate change pledges of single countries.

"The problem is that summing up the voluntary pledges of each country, the 2-degree target, or to limit temperature increase within 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, will not be reached," Pasini explained to Xinhua. The increase would probably be around 3 degrees, he said.

In 1997, Pasini recalled, the Kyoto Protocol adopted a "top-down" approach to climate change negotiations, based on the 2-degree target. But in 2009, when world leaders got together in Copenhagen to negotiate a new framework, there was a shift from a "top down" to a "bottom up" approach.

"They unfortunately failed to reach any legally-binding international framework, so that later, each country voluntarily pledged its emission target," Pasini explained. "For this reason, even though the Paris conference from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11 will end with success, it will not lead us to solve the problem of climate change," he told Xinhua. Worse still, "some countries may decide not to comply," he added.

Relying on the voluntary pledges of single countries could certainly be "a first step to a solution to the problem over the next decades, but we are now paying the price of carbon dioxide emissions produced some 50 years ago," Pasini pointed out.

If temperatures exceed the 2-degree target, the effects of climate change is expected to become very serious, he said.

"We are starting to see the first damages caused by climate change, and all our models show a worse future. We have witnessed record-breaking heat weaves, very heavy rainfall events together with the fact that we are erecting buildings and infrastructures where we should not," Pasini said.

Climate change is a huge challenge which takes time, the scientist stressed, calling for "an economic change from the bottom up," that is to say moving up the chain of consciousness, good consumer habits and energy saving by society.

Mauro Albrizio, European affairs director at Legambiente (League for the Environment), the most widespread environmental organization in Italy, acknowledged the gravity of the issue, but was more optimistic that the next days could become positively crucial for the future of the planet.

Albrizio noted that the Kyoto Protocol involved 35 countries, covering 11 percent of global emissions. "Now more than 180 countries have already pledged actions, and they cover over 95 percent of global emissions," he said.

"Here in Paris, there is the possibility to reach a new global agreement, which could be a first important step to face the climate crisis in a serious way...everything depends on governments' political will, but if they put into practice the principles that the world leaders have shared at the opening of the conference, we are on the right track," he told Xinhua.

"According to estimates of the Climate Action Tracker - a joint project by four European institutions - if all nations fully implement the actions they have already pledged, average temperatures will rise by between 2.7 and 3 degrees by 2100 from pre-industrial times, compared to the current trend of 4 degrees," Albrizio elaborated.

If further agreements are reached during the Paris conference, for example by introducing a mechanism to measure, report and verify the progress of each country, the 2-degree target can become achievable, he stressed.

Albrizio said China had started a significant "change of pace" as regards climate policies. In his view, "China has made important commitments."

"China has strongly invested in the green economy and has become a leader in renewable energies. The country's middle class has also realized the importance of the issue," Albrizio told Xinhua.

"China has allied with world powers on the climate issue. That is to say that, differently from the other emerging economies, China has put money on the table, giving instead of asking for resources for the cause," he said. Endit