Advanced economies are on track to meet just 30% of the UN target to reduce warming, says lobby group, as Australia feels wrath of developing nations

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Australian delegates have been questioned about the government’s climate policies at a United Nations conference in Germany.

The hour-long grilling from developing nations such as China and Brazil came at a meeting in Bonn which is as part of a mutual assessment process ahead of a conference in Paris in December where countries hope to sign a global agreement on climate action.

Countries questioned Australia’s scrapping of the carbon tax and whether the federal government’s $2.55bn direct action policy will be enough to meet Australia’s emissions reduction target of five per cent by 2020.

Everything you need to know about the Paris climate summit and UN talks Read more

The industrialised economies are far off track in helping the world meet the UN’s global warming target, a monitoring group said on Thursday.



Carbon pledges made by 31 economies – members of the G7 and the European Union (EU) – mean that by 2030, they will contribute only 30% of the effort they should be, it said.

Further work is needed to ratchet up commitments, said a report of the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) initiative, issued on the sidelines of the Bonn talks.

The 195 countries of the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) are meant to seal a pact to ensure warming is limited to 2C over pre-industrial times.

Laborious and complex, the talks have been dogged by finger-pointing between rich and poor countries over sharing the burden for curbing carbon emissions.

“Ambitious greenhouse-gas reduction proposals by the G7+EU states are central for a successful outcome in Paris,” said the CAT analysis.

“These countries are responsible in aggregate for around 30 percent of global greenhouse gases emissions and 40 percent of global GDP.”