Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

The world has reached a historic agreement that will influence the future of the global environment in the years to come, at a challenging 13-day United Nations Climate Conference in Paris.

For the first time, the deal united nearly 200 nations in a single agreement on tackling climate change.

The consensus on the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions highlights the need to keep global temperatures ‘well below’ 2.0 C and ‘endeavor to limit’ them even more, to 1.5 C.

The groundbreaking deal will limit the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity to the same levels that trees, soil and oceans can absorb naturally, beginning at some point between 2050 and 2100.

Every country will work for achieving the goals set in the document, including the countries with the highest level of emission, as each country’s contribution to cutting emissions will be reviewed every five years. Meanwhile, rich countries will help poorer nations by providing ‘climate finance’ to adapt to climate change and switch to renewable energy.

The Paris agreement follows the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 that set emission cutting targets for a number of developed countries, but the U.S. pulled out and others failed to comply.

However, analysts assure that Paris is only the beginning of a shift towards a low-carbon world, and there is much more to do.

"Paris is just the starting gun for the race towards a low-carbon future," says WWF-UK Chief Executive David Nussbaum.

Azerbaijan’s actions to fight climate change

Being at the crossroads of West and East, Azerbaijan is experiencing the negative effect of the global warming caused by the greenhouse gases emission.

Experts claim that the impending climate change may lead to fewer crops in the country in the next 20-30 years.

Azerbaijan, an oil-rich nation, is believed to produce only 0.1 percent of the worldwide greenhouse gas emission. Although this is quite small figure, the country is keen on providing legal reforms for air pollution reduction, such as the law on enterprises.

Recently, the country started to control the exhaust of used automobiles and switched to the Euro 4 ecological standard.

The country is also actively developing the alternative energy by building new facilities using reach alternative energy sources of the country especially solar, wind and thermal energies.

Azerbaijan plans to bring the share of alternative energy sources in the total volume of energy consumption up to 20 percent by 2020, which requires 7 billion manats of investment.

Ecologist Telman Zeynalov assures that methane pollution is more dangerous than carbon dioxide and the main greenhouse challenge is humidity in the environment.

“For instance, El Nino current that warm the Pacific Ocean is a reason of more carbon dioxide emission than all the factories and cars in the world,” he stressed.

He believes there is no global warming at all, but a climate change that is happening periodically in 60-70 years, and the next period will be global cooling period.