100 states pledge to emit 30% less methane by 2030, but without India, China and Russia

Meeting that goal would limit the rise in temperatures by 0.2 ° C by 2050 and prevent 200,000 premature deaths, according to the proposal’s godparents.

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The European Union and United States have promoted this Tuesday in the COP26 an alliance to reduce methane emissions by 30% this decade, a global pact against this potent greenhouse gas less known than carbon dioxide to which a hundred states have joined, but not China, India and Russia.

Meeting that goal would limit the rise in temperatures by 0.2 ° C by 2050 and prevent 200,000 premature deaths, hundreds of thousands of emergency hospital admissions due to asthma and the loss of 20 million tons of crops per year, according to the godparents of the proposal.

“Around 30% of global warming since the Industrial Revolution is due to methane emissions,” but “it is one of the gases that we can cut faster. And doing so will immediately slow down climate change,” he said in the presentation. of the initiative the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

Methane (CH4) comes mainly from landfills, the livestock sector and the energy sector, and it is this last area of ​​activity that presents “undoubtedly the greatest reduction potential”, said Von der Leyen in that act of the program of the COP26 climate summit held these days in the Scottish town of Glasgow.

“About half of the heat we experience” comes from methane emissions, the US president has said. Joe Biden, to describe one of the various gases that cause the greenhouse effect, such as nitrous oxide, tropospheric ozone, water vapor or fluorinated gases, among others.

The US president recalled that when the initiative was announced last September only the EU and nine states had joined it, which now exceeds one hundred with partners such as Colombia, Togo, Vietnam, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Micronesia, Chile, Indonesia or Morocco.

Signatories represent around 70% of methane emissions

Despite the absence of the three major emitters that drag the most in terms of the climate fight, Russia, India and China, the signatory states represent around 70% of the emissions of this gas.

Methane is up to “80 times more destructive than CO2 and is fully responsible for 0.5 degrees of the 1.1 ° C warming we have today,” said the United States special envoy against climate change. John Kerry.

The Copernicus Atmospheric Surveillance Service (CAMS) has announced that it is working on an innovative tool with which it will be able to monitor anthropogenic emissions carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) in near real time and individually.

More than 100 countries have also committed to curb and reverse deforestation looking forward to 2030. In addition, twelve countries will spend some 10.3 billion euros between 2021 and 2025 to protect and restore forests. To that amount must be added some 6.2 billion euros of private investment.

On the other hand, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has called on the international community to equip itself with mechanisms to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions and has warned that the European Union will begin to tax CO2 of certain products in its borders “in three years”.