Peru has announced its planned Climate Action Plan for 31 per cent below business as usual, and a strong focus on adaptation. It has also opened up a round of public consultations within Peruvian civil society until July 17.
This most recent plan therefore comes after 12 years of collective planning, as Peru has been developed a suite of regional and national strategies to address climate change. These plans and include specific strategies to reduce emissions across industrial processes, forests, agriculture, sustainable transportation and waste.
On initial account, their emissions reduction pledge of 31% by 2030 is very ambitious. However, a baseline of “Business as Usual” could raise questions over their potential, especially considering recent rapid advances in economic growth.
After years of political instability and all-out conflict in Peru during the 1980’s, Peru’s economy provided one of the lowest levels of economic freedom in the world. In the early 1990s, former President Alberto Fujimori began major, market-oriented economic reforms and privatizations that drove Peru into a period of rapid growth.
Today, Peru is listed as the 20th most-free economy in the world, according to the Economic Freedom of the World 2014 Annual Report. Since 1994, Peru has experienced a an average rate of real growth at about 5.5 percent per year.
This rate of growth has slowed over the last 12 months, but there are still hopes that Peruvians could receive the same level of economic freedoms now enjoyed in neighbouring Chile by 2030. In fact, this is indeed the “Business As Usual” scenario that is predicted, with a continued rise in emissions based on growth experienced between 2010 and 2015.
Under a BAU scenario, it is estimated that Peru would increase their annual emissions to 216 million tonnes of CO2 eq., and that this would rise to 243 millon tonnes by 2o25, and to 269 millon tonnes CO2eq bu 2030.
However, this does not take into account recent economic downturns, or pre-2010 emissions levels. This could potentially become a key aspect of the ongoing civil society dialogues that are now open until July 17.
In developing their INDC, Peru considered 4 different emissions reduction scenarios. These include:
Scenario 1: Including 21 different mitigation projects, reducing 9.5 million tonnes of CO2 and reducing only 4% of emissions based on a Business As Usual (BAU) baseline leading up to 2030.
Scenario 2: Including 44 different mitigation projects, reducing 37.8 million tonnes of CO2 and reducing at a rate of 14% of emissions at BAU to 2030.
Scenario 3: Including 58 different mitigation projects, reducing 82.2 million tonnes of CO2 and reducing at a rate of 31% of emissions at BAU to 2030.
Scenario 4: Including 76 different mitigation projects reducing 111.8 million tonnes of CO2 and reducing at a rate of 42% of emissions at BAU to 2030.
Of these scenario’s, it will now be up to Civil Society to contribute as to whether Peru should indeed submit a more progressive climate action plan. Considering the planning that has gone into creating an increasingly ambitious scenario of a 42 per cent reduction by 2030, this could also be released as a twin-track conditional and unconditional pledge. This style of Climate Action Plan has already been seen from Morocco and Mexico, and could become a growing trend among developing countries, with talk already circulating around India and its potentially “twin-track pledge”.
Together with its mitigation pledge, Peru has also developed an extensive Adaptation package, focussing on decreasing the vulnerability of its largely agrarian population.
Workshops will now be held nationwide to gather input into the final submission, due soon after the July 17 cut off for public contributions. As Bitia Chavez, has suggested, it is critical that Peruvians are “aware and fully engaged in this process to contribute positively to the environment”.
She has welcomed the INDC, being the first South American country outside of Mexico to release their INDC, and has noted that it has the potential to steer Peru towards a far more positive environmental future.
While it is already 54 pages in length, she has also called on Civil Society within Peru to “build on” this document and “make our views public to build a better, final version of the INDC”.
To contribute to Peru’s INDC, you are advised to email your suggestions to [email protected]
For more information on the Peruvian consultation process, Click here
To read the full document please visit this page.
This article was inspired by the rapid response from Peruvian tracker, Bitia Chavez
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