Greenhouse gas emissions plans ‘will slow climate change’

Plans by about 150 countries to curb greenhouse gas emissions will slow climate change this century and keep alive a goal of limiting a rise in temperatures to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), the United Nations said.

The national strategies would restrict a rise in world emissions to the equivalent of 56.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year by 2030 — four billion less than expected without the extra action — from 49.0 billion in 2010, it said.

If fully implemented, plans by nations led by China and the United States “begin to make a significant dent in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions”, Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said in a statement.