Short biography:
Yann is currently working on subnational climate action and recently obtained his PhD from the University of Melbourne titled: "Climate justice: Can we agree to disagree? Operationalising competing equity principles to mitigate global warming". His research seeks to derive national emissions trajectories and assess the ambition of current climate pledges under the UNFCCC.
Prior to his PhD, Yann obtained a Master’s in climate, ocean and atmosphere science (Pierre and Marie Curie University) as well as a Magister in theoretical physics (University of Paris-Sud). He has various research experience in oceanography (Equatorial Atlantic, Arctic, Antarctica), hydrology, cosmology and sea ice rheology at the universities of Pierre and Marie Curie, Harvard, Berkeley, Oxford, Copenhagen and McGill, respectively. His research and work involved field work in Benin, the equatorial Atlantic Ocean, Antarctica and a sailing journey across the Arctic North-West Passage.
http://climatecollege.unimelb.edu.au/profiles/yann-robiou-du-pont
Abstract:
Under the bottom-up architecture of the Paris Agreement, countries pledge Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Current NDCs individually align, at best, with divergent concepts of equity and are collectively inconsistent with the Paris Agreement. We show that the global 2030-emissions of NDCs match the sum of each country adopting the least-stringent of five effort-sharing allocations of a well-below 2 °C-scenario. Extending such a self-interested bottom-up aggregation of equity might lead to a median 2100-warming of 2.3 °C. Tightening the warming goal of each country’s effort-sharing approach to aspirational levels of 1.1 °C and 1.3 °C could achieve the 1.5 °C and well-below 2 °C-thresholds, respectively. This new hybrid allocation reconciles the bottom-up nature of the Paris Agreement with its top-down warming thresholds and provides a temperature metric to assess NDCs. When taken as benchmark by other countries, the NDCs of India, the EU, the USA and China lead to 2.6 °C, 3.2 °C, 4 °C and over 5.1 °C warmings, respectively.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07223-9
Arranged date for the seminar talk: Jan 14, 2019
BCCR seminar room 4020, Jahnebakken 5, 14:15 PM