SINGAPORE - Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu will be co-facilitating negotiations on mitigation at the upcoming United Nations climate conference, which will be crucial in limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial levels.
As the world has already warmed by around 1.2 deg C, mitigation – which involves reducing global greenhouse gas emissions – is a “key track of work in the climate negotiations”, requiring strong collective action by all countries to limit global temperature rise, she said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
The 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP28, will be held in Dubai from Nov 30 to Dec 12.
Ms Fu will be co-facilitating the negotiations with her Norwegian counterpart, Minister of Climate and the Environment Espen Barth-Eide. It will be the third time both ministers are co-facilitating at the conference. They had partnered at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, and COP27 in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, during ministerial consultations on issues relating to carbon markets, or Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
A major UN report released on Sept 8 – known as the global stocktake synthesis report – found that while there has been global progress in climate change mitigation since the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, more needs to be done to limit temperature rise to 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial levels.
Countries would also have to set more ambitious targets in mitigating their greenhouse gas emissions in order for the world to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
One key step would entail scaling up renewable energy, while phasing out all unabated fossil fuels such as coal.
The global stocktake process, which takes place every five years, will wrap up at COP28. This will help to guide a new round of nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, which are country-specific climate action plans. The stocktake will help to pinpoint areas where climate mitigation is falling short.
In 2022, Singapore updated its NDC to reduce emissions to around 60 million tonnes in 2030 after peaking its emissions earlier. This stronger target precedes a previous goal to peak emissions at 65 million tonnes by 2030.
Ms Fu told Parliament in November 2022 that Singapore will peak its greenhouse gas emissions between 2025 and 2028 at around 65 million tonnes.
She said then that it would be premature to announce a precise year in which emissions would peak because peaking emissions would need substantial transformations across industries, economy and society.
