Taking as a global framework the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 1992, and the different instruments it gave rise to (such as the Kyoto Protocol and later the Paris Agreement), the strategy to combat climate change has focused to date on an attempt to limit and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents.
Despite these efforts, global emissions have continued to rise steadily, and there is now a broad scientific consensus that it is no longer sufficient to maintain a strategy focused solely on trying to reduce GHG emissions. According to the UNEP Emissions Gap Report of 2024, in any of the scenarios studied, “future and costly large-scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be necessary to mitigate the overshoot of the Paris targets.” In other words, faced with a problem of excess GHG stocks accumulating in the atmosphere, reducing emissions and/or addressing flows alone will always be insufficient to avoid tipping points.
speakers
Paulo Magalhães
Lawyer and researcher at CIJ - Interdisciplinary Research Center in Justice of the Faculty of Law of the University of Porto, Graduated from the Catholic University of Porto, Postgraduate from the University of Coimbra, PhD in Human Ecology from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Post-Doctorate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Porto with work on the legal status of Climate.
Author of “Condomínio da Terra: Das Mudanças Climatológicas a uma nova Conceção Jurídica do Planeta” (2007), and Co-editor of SOS – Safe Operating Space Treaty: A new approach to manage our use of the Earth System, 2016. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Common House of Humanity and coordinator of the Climate Mission Group Common Heritage of Humanity. He is an Advisor to CNADS – National Council for Sustainable Development, and to the Scientific Committee of the Portuguese Council for Health and Environment.
He won the Green Vision Inspiration Award, Gold Merit Medal, City of Porto and the Portugal Inspirational Award in Social Economy 2022.