The emerging link between black carbon and climate change

Mitigating climate change is at the top of policy agendas across the globe, with strategies that range from improving energy efficiency to introducing cap-and-trade schemes to reforestation. All of these approaches have one common objective; reducing carbon-dioxide emissions.

While we must reduce carbon-dioxide emissions to reduce climate change, climatologists are now presenting increasingly convincing evidence that policy-makers should also pay attention to other global warmers, such as black carbon, more commonly known as soot.

Climatologists estimate that black carbon is responsible for anything up to 20% of global climate change with a more concentrated impact in the Arctic and the Himalayas. Black carbon comes from many different sources; wood-burning stoves in developing countries, diesel or other dirty fuels in developed countries. It can blow thousands of miles to rest on snow or ice causing greatly accelerated melt-rates.

This roundtable discussion, chaired by MEP Graham Watson, features one of the world’s foremost experts on the effect of black carbon and climate change as well as key policy-makers and stakeholders from the European Commission, the United Nations Environment Programme, and Friends of the Earth Europe. The aim of the discussions is to facilitate understanding of the issue, and discuss what the EU, as a key driver in global climate change policy, can and should be doing to help reduce the effect of this often overlooked global warmer.

The perspective of an NGO on black carbon reduction - Dr. Werner Reh

A global overview of the phenomenon, sources of black carbon and benefits of reduction - Frank Raes

Click here to read The Parliament Magazine event report