Developing countries that include India and the Gulf States have secured a four-year grace period in which to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) while they grow their economies, after the 28th Meeting of the Parties of the Montreal Protocol concluded an agreement to end HFC use on 16 October 2016.
The latest landmark agreement on climate change to succeed since the COP21 Paris agreement settled in Kigali Rwanda after almost seven years of negotiations over how and when to eliminate HFCs.
HFCs are a heat-trapping greenhouse gas commonly found in air conditioners, refrigerators, inhalers and insulating foams.
Around one hundred countries considered in a crucial stage of development, including China, have committed to taking action by 2024. A group of relatively smaller countries, including India, the Gulf States, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan are meanwhile set to reduce their HFC use by 2028 after requesting special dispensation. The world’s richest countries, chiefly the United States, plan to halt production and consumption of HFCs by 2018, although the US senate could still block the deal.
Prior to the accord, scientists and ministers including Hakima El Haite, Morocco’s delegate minister in charge of environment, said that a successfully implemented deal could prevent 0.5C of global warming is prevented, which equates to a quarter of the 2C limit set in Paris. David Doniger, director at US-based advocacy group the Natural Resources Defence Council has compared the impact of the deal to “stopping the entire world’s fossil fuel CO2 emissions for more than two years”.
One of those provisions is the US$80 million Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund reported by Development Finance upon its launched at the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September 2016.
The fund reflects a small part of a US$100 billion commitment made in Paris to help developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change, and at least US$53 million of the US$80 million pledged is expected to come from high-profile donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, among others.
HFCs were developed in response to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a global agreement requiring nations and manufacturers to find a substitute for chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that were destroying the planet’s ozone layer. The next challenge for world leaders will be to find new alternatives to HFCs.