Sufficient or insufficient: Assessment on the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) of world¡¯s major emitters

The recent conference of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) resulted in the Intended National Determined Contributions (INDCs)by 190 countries. The aim of this article is to offer an analysis of the ambition and fairness of the mitigation components of the INDCs submitted by parties. We use a unified framework to assess the 23 INDCs covering 50 countries (EU 28 countries as a Party to the Convention), representing 87.45% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2012. First, we transform initial INDC files into reported reduction target. Second, we create four schemes and six scenarios to find out required reduction effort, which takes nation¡¯s reduction responsibility, capacity and potential into consideration, reflecting historical and current development status of each nation. At last, we put reported reduction target and required reduction effort together to assess INDCs. In the evaluation of the 23emitters, two emitters (EU and Brazil) were rated as "sufficient". Seven emitters, such as China, the United States and Canada were rated as "moderate". Fourteen emitters, such as India, Russian and Japan were rated as "insufficient". Most pledges reveal a great distance from representing a fair contribution.