Background

The impacts of climate change are undermining progress on the sustainable development agenda. Achieving the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement is vital to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

According to the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, to keep global warming under 1.5 oC will require reducing emissions and removing large-scale CO2 from the atmosphere, through a range of approaches called Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and net-negative thereafter. CDR methods vary and include the use of nature-based approaches, such as afforestation and enhancing wetlands, or engineering-based approaches to directly capture CO2 from ambient air. They all carry potential benefits, risks and pose governance challenges for present and future generations. Apart from some nature-based approaches, no CDR techniques are currently ready to deploy at the speed or scale necessary to prevent overshooting the 1.5 – 2°C temperature goal.

Despite increasing discussions on these issues in the international community, important knowledge gaps remain, in particular on how CDR could be scaled through national planning and long-term climate ambition while ensure that the co-benefits can be maximized and trade-offs be minimized with regards to other SDGs.

This event aims to seek insights and perspectives from diverse experts on the following questions:

• What is the current status of research and policy discussions around CDR?
• What are the potential implications of a possible deployment of CDR at required scale and pace for delivering the SDGs?
• What knowledge/research gaps exist around CDR and its potential implications for delivery of the SDGs?
• How to scale CDR in the Asia Pacific region by taking into account specificities and development needs?
• What role could different regional actors play in addressing the governance challenges of CDR?
• What do young people, who will live with the consequences of choices and decisions made today, know or think about this issue?

Agenda