We, the undersigned support the Declaration on Reducing Atmospheric Methane, which would commit signatories — national and subnational governments, and international bodies — to take key steps to reduce methane emissions and remove atmospheric methane, in order to lower atmospheric methane concentrations to preindustrial levels.
Current methane levels are at 800,000-year highs and rising rapidly. Atmospheric methane concentrations jumped more last year than in any year of the past 35. According to the latest IPPC report1, methane has caused one third of global warming (as observed on average for 2010 to 2019, relative to average temperatures in the late 1800s), and has contributed at least half as much warming as carbon dioxide.
Methane emissions from anthropogenic sources are rising quickly, and continued warming is also likely to intensify biogenic emissions from wetlands. While it’s critical to cut methane emissions as deeply as possible, including in the fossil fuel sector, the largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions globally is the agricultural sector, whose emissions are impossible to eliminate completely.
At the same time, about 40% of methane emissions are from natural sources such as wetlands. We must aggressively mitigate methane emissions wherever we can, while conserving and restoring the ecological functions of wetlands and other ecosystems. But we must also address natural and anthropogenic methane emissions that we can’t effectively reduce or eliminate.
In April 2021 leading climate scientists, atmospheric scientists and other experts issued a statement urging national and global leaders to take effective measures to achieve a rapid reduction in atmospheric methane levels. In addition to reducing methane emissions, they called for more research on scalable ways of removing methane from the atmosphere. Some emerging methods for removing methane from the atmosphere were discussed in the most recent IPCC report, which also cited current research about them2.
The April statement called upon all countries to commit to cutting methane emissions aggressively, to fund research on methane mitigation and removal, and to frame and implement global governance to ensure full and proper implementation of such methods in order to return to atmospheric methane concentrations to preindustrial levels.
Now it’s time for leaders to act, and take concrete steps toward these goals. The Declaration on Reducing Atmospheric Methane lays out such steps that can be taken now, and a framework for researching a range of potential methane solutions and implementing those that prove safe and effective, including but not limited to the ones the Declaration mentions by name. We urge national governments and other jurisdictions to adopt it.
Furthermore, given that rising methane concentrations contribute significantly to global warming, ecosystem damage and biodiversity loss, we urge parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and other relevant treaties and agreements to take swift, effective action on methane emissions reduction and atmospheric methane removal, incorporating as appropriate the goals and framework of the Declaration on Reducing Atmospheric Methane.
Signed,
Austria
Dr. Lena Höglund-Isaksson
Senior Research Scholar, Pollution Management Research Group
Energy, Environment and Climate
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Editor, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Vienna
Canada
J. David Hughes
President, Global Sustainability Research Inc.
Finland
Dr Tero Mustonen
Snowchange Cooperative
France
Philippe Bousquet
Director, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement
Université de Versailles – Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Gif sur Yvette
Philippe Ciais
IPSL – LSCE
Centre d’Etudes L’Orme des Merisiers
Coordinating Lead Author, IPCC WG1, AR5, Chapter 6
Member, French Academy of Science
Gif sur Yvette, France
Renaud de Richter, PhD.
Engineering School of Chemistry
Montpellier
Germany
Dr Franz Deitrich Oeste
gM-Ingenieurbüro
Kirchhain
Ireland
Dr Bo Xiao
Lecturer in Chemical Engineering
Advisor of Studies in Chemical Engineering
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast
Netherlands
Dr. Maarten van Herpen
Founder/director, Acacia Impact Innovation
Senior Scientist, Methane Action
Eindhoven, North Brabant
Norway
Ms. Kathryn Baker, MBA
Dartmouth Tuck School of Business
Former Member of the Board of DIrectors, Central Bank of Norway
U.K.
Leon Di Marco
FSK Technology Research
London
Dr. Peter Wadhams
University of Cambridge
Cambridge
Dr Qingchun Yuan
Lecturer in Chemical Engineering
Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry
Aston University
Birmingham
USA
Dr. Viney P. Aneja
Professor of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, North Carolina
Dr. Ron Baiman
Associate Professor of Economics
Dept. of Business and Analytics
Benedictine University, Lisle, IL
Dr. Phoebe Barnard
Stable Planet Alliance
Professor, University of Washington
Seattle, Washington
Ms. Dinah Bear
Former General Counsel, Deputy General Counsel, President’s Council on Environmental Quality, Executive Office of the President, under Democratic and Republican Presidents
Tucson, AZ
Dr. Wil Burns
Visiting Professor, Environmental Policy & Culture Program
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL
F. Stuart Chapin, III
Professor Emeritus of Ecology
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks AK
Tara Illgner
University of Virginia
Graduate Student, Atmospheric Chemistry
COVES Fellow
Charlottesville, Virginia
Dr. Anthony Ingraffea
Professor of Engineering Emeritus
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
Robert B. Jackson
Professor, Earth Systems Science
Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
Senior Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
Deborah Lawrence
Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences
Director of the Program in Environmental Thought and Practice
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia
Michael E. Mann
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science
Director, Earth System Science Center
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA
Dr. Albert Manville
Senior Lecturer and Adjunct Professor, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Advanced Academic Programs, Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD
Michael MacCracken
Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs
Climate Institute
Washington, DC
J. Patrick Megonigal
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Edgewater, MD 21037
Dr. Duncan Menge
Associate Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, and Director of Graduate Studies
Columbia University
New York, NY
Dr. William R Moomaw
Visiting Scientist, Woodwell Climate Research Center
Emeritus Professor of International Environmental Policy, Center for International Environment and Resource Policy
Co-Director Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University
Boston, MA
Dr. John Perona
Professor of Environmental Biochemistry at Portland State University, Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at OHSU, and faculty fellow of the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at PSU
Stuart Pimm
Doris Duke Chair of Conservation
Duke University
Raleigh, North Carolina
William H. Schlesinger
James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry
Dean (Emeritus) the School of the Environment
Duke University
President (Emeritus), the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Durham, North Carolina
James Gustave Speth
Former Administrator, United Nations Development Program, Former Chair of the UN Development Group, founder and former president of the World Resources Institute; former chairman of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, cofounder, Natural Resources Defense Council.
Professor of Law at the Vermont Law School, senior fellow at Demos, the Democracy Collaborative, and the Tellus Institute. Former Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental
Burlington, VT
Dr. Shaojie Song
Research Associate in Environmental Science and Engineering
Lecturer on Environmental Science and Public Policy
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
Allan Thornton
President, Environmental Investigations Agency
Washington, DC
Joe Uehlein
President, Labor Network for Sustainability
Takoma Park, MD
Dr. Donn Viviani
Former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Scientist, former Director of Climate Policy Assessment Division
Former Chair, Great Lakes Water Board’s Toxic Substances Committee
Climate Protection and Restoration Initiative
Arlington, VA
Qianlai Zhuang
Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Professor of Agronomy
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN
1 IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M. I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T. K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. In Press.
2 Ibid. Proposals to remove CH4 from the atmosphere are emerging (de Richter et al., 2017; Jackson et al., 2019). CH4 removal methods seek to capture CH4 directly from ambient air similarly to DACCS for CO2 using for example zeolite trapping, but instead of storing it CH4 would be chemically oxidized to CO2 (Jackson et al., 44 2019).
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