“Belarus fully fulfills the commitments made under the Paris Agreement and even exceeds them. According to the state cadastre of greenhouse gas emissions and absorption, Belarus reduced emissions by 36.7% in 2021,”, Khudyk claimed on November 29.
On the contrary, “Green Network” representatives, the association of Belarussian environmental experts, activists, and public organizations, made a statement that everything was not exactly as the minister said.
In 2015, Belarus committed to 28% reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 relative to 1990 levels. But that time, in 2015, emissions had already decreased by 46.3% compared to 1990.
It had happened due to the USSR's collapse which caused
the closure of numerous enterprises working on Union's projects in Belarus.
Moreover, Belarus doesn't need to take specific steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even though the country has raised its target to 35% in 2021.
Belarussian officials regularly make such manipulations with data, in particular, changing conversion factors in reports submitted annually to the secretariat of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
“Green Network” experts have analyzed Belarusian state greenhouse gas inventories for 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2023 and as a result, the discrepancy with the real situation was spotted.
“When the forest grew in 2013, the “super-specialists” calculated its absorption of greenhouse gases. And then every year other coefficients were applied to the same forest. That made their reports more attractive,” the Green Portal says.
Judging by government reports, from 2015 to 2023, the Belarusian forest increased its absorption of greenhouse gases by 2.1 times. At the same time, the state of the forest recorded in the country’s forest cadastre has not changed: it has not become younger, has not increased either in an area or in the potential productivity and growth rate of trees, has not become greener, denser, etc.
“Green Network” experts say that Belarus formally fulfills its climate commitments, and the target of emissions is lower than acceptable for the country.
In his speech at COP28 UAE, United Nations Climate Change Conference, Aleksandr Lukashenko said that the green agenda was meaningless in conditions of confrontation.
“One cannot put pressure on political opponents with sanctions and at the same time demand from them decisions that are expensive for national economies,” he, in particular, stated.
The annual UN Climate Change Conference lasted from November 30, 2023, to December 12 in Dubai.