Franco Headshot

Dr. Carol Franco, a senior research associate in the College of Natural Resources and Environment’s Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation (FREC), will give a seminar on Friday, February 17, 2017 at 11:15 a.m., in Fralin Auditorium. Her seminar will be titled: Global Climate Change Policy – Why should we care?

Abstract

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international treaty that provides a platform for multilateral efforts to address the impacts of climate change on people and ecosystems. By establishing a process, the UNFCCC allows for Parties to propose actions and agree to those actions. An important recent achievement was the Paris Agreement (PA) that was adopted by 194 Parties to the Convention on December 2015 with the goal of strengthening global efforts to reduce green house gases emissions, adapting to the effects of climate change, and providing support to developing countries. The main objective of the PA is to limit increases in average global temperature to 2o C above pre-industrial levels. Therefore, the PA requires Parties to put forward commitments to strengthen country-level mitigation efforts and to enhance their adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change; these are known as National Determined Contributions (NDCs). The PA includes three main work areas: mitigation efforts, e.g. Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation; foster forest conservation, sustainable management and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+) and Nationally Appropriated Mitigation Actions; adaptation efforts, e.g. National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), loss and damage; and means of implementation, technology transfer, capacity building, and the mobilization of financial resources to support developing countries. These efforts constitute a growing field of work on which FREC, based on its experience, could engage productively.