Mexico and U.S. Sign International Coalition for Fighting Climate Change, Reducing Emissions and Promoting Clean Air

Mexico and U.S. Sign International Coalition for Fighting Climate Change, Reducing Emissions and Promoting Clean Air

To continue fighting climate change, Mexico and the United States recently announced the formation of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, a new international coalition to reduce emissions of common pollutants that contribute to rapid climate change and widespread health problems. Sweden, Canada, Ghana, and Bangladesh are also members of the coalition.

Target emissions to be reduced include methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide, as well as soot and hydro fluorocarbons that contribute to climate change.

Drew Shindell, a senior climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute on Space Studies, said in a The New York Times article that “attacking short-lived climate agents could have immediate impacts.” Additionally, the president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development Durwood Zaelke said that the initiative, if expanded and adequately financed, would have more impact on the climate than the United Nations climate change negotiations, at least in the near term.

The coalition will be funded with US$15 million. In the next months, specific actions will be determined on its plan to reduce emissions as well as specific targets.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) will run the coalition. On a recent report, UNEP identified more than a dozen steps that could be potentially pursued by the coalition, and if executed, the rate of global warmth could slow by half a degree Celsius by 2050. 

The coalition’s efforts in reducing short-lived pollutants are not meant to replace efforts on reducing carbon emissions, but rather will be complementary to them.