Equitable mitigation to achieve the 1.5°C goal in Latin America countries

Climate change impacts in Latin America are becoming catastrophic, affecting natural resources and infrastructure and causing setbacks on its people’s sustainable development. For countries within this region, achieving the 1.5°C long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement is critical mainly because of its high vulnerability and low adaptation capacity to climate change. The analysis in this article aims to compare if the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) submitted by Latin American countries align to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C long-term temperature goal. For the analysis, cumulative emissions for the 2018-2100 period are allocated among Latin American countries with historical responsibility and equality criteria integrated into the Model of Climate Justice (MCJ), and finally obtaining emissions budgets. Therefore, the allocated emissions budgets with the MCJ are then compared with cumulative emissions implied in the NDCs submitted by Latin American countries. Two main conclusions were obtained from the Latin American NDCs analysis. First, Latin American countries as an aggregated will consume by 2030, 67.8 % of the emissions budget allocated with the MCJ throughout the end of the century. Second, this percentage could be reduced if conditional commitments within the NDC that require foreign aid are achieved, and countries that will consume the total of their emissions budget by 2030 are able to increase ambition in their mitigation commitments within reviewed ND