MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina pledges to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 million by 2030

Minister Bergman voices Argentina's commitment to making a difference on environmental issues

Argentina will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from 570 to 483 million tonnes by 2030, Environment Minister Sergio Bergman announces in Marrakesh.Argentina's Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development Sergio Bergman said Thursday at the United Nation's 22nd Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Marrakesh (COP 22) that his country was working on a plan to achieve “zero deforestation,” the recovery of degraded lands and the change of energy matrix.

 “With the funding we are also seeking for these policies, we will continue to grow our ambition and our development,” said Bergman. Almost a year after announcing the process of revising the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which was released in Paris in late 2015, Argentina improved its proposal to combat climate change.

Bergman stressed that “we come back here with a methodological review and an improvement in terms of ambition, with a strategic horizon for 2030, which may sound ambitious indeed but if we fail it will all result in an irrelevant stance in the global discussion.” He also Bergman argued that the revision of the methodological process in the construction of the index “has to do with giving transparency to the process, ensuring the participation of the different instances and also understanding that the ministries, portfolios and actions that have an impact on the emissions that produce greenhouse warming call for a consensus and a change in policy.”

He went on to add that the issue was not “a theoretical discussion about a figure that we want to improve, but the consistence between that aspiration and the decision to make policy changes.” For Argentina, that would mean “raising the commitment to reduce unconditional emissions - that is, those not tied to external financing - from 15 to 18 percent.” explained Bergman.

That percentage translates into 109 million tons of carbon dioxide that Argentina will stop issuing by the year 2030 in relation to its BAU (business as usual) scenario, denomination that refers to the situation in which the country would be if the necessary measures are not undertaken.

With regard to their conditional contributions, which depend on obtaining international funding to carry out complementary measures, the review suggests that the lowest amount of committed emissions would be 37 percent (which improves 30 percent previously). According to the latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory, the total emissions are divided into the following sectors: agriculture and deforestation (44%), energy (27%), transport (13%), industry (12%) and waste (4%).

Bergman also called for the creation of a National Cabinet for Climate Change, which would ratify “Argentina's decision to be a leading player in environmental discussions at the highest global level, understanding that in this, our common home, we are all included and our actions have an impact on it.”