PARIS: The United Nations recently delivered a stark assessment, revealing that current national commitments to reduce carbon emissions are woefully inadequate. Their analysis suggests that global emissions will only see a 10% decrease by 2035, a figure far from what’s needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change. This troubling projection comes as many countries have failed to submit their updated climate action plans on schedule, hindering a comprehensive global overview.
[Representative image: COP29 Climate Talks]
Ahead of the critical COP30 climate talks in Brazil, the UN Climate Change body provided an emissions calculation alongside its formal assessment of national 2035 pledges. This extra calculation factored in elements from major industrial nations such as China and the European Union, even though their full official updated pledges were not yet submitted.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently expressed a grim sentiment, stating that the slow pace of action makes it “inevitable” that the ambitious goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C will be missed in the near term. This overshoot, he warned, would unleash devastating consequences during a period as countries work to pull temperatures back down again by the end of the century.
Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, noted that while this estimated 10% emissions cut indicates “humanity is now clearly bending the emissions curve downwards for the first time,” he emphasized that it’s “still not nearly fast enough.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly stated that for a reasonable chance of adhering to the Paris Agreement’s more ambitious 1.5°C limit, global emissions must plummet by 60% from 2019 levels by 2035. With global average warming already hovering around 1.4°C today, many scientists believe the 1.5°C threshold is likely to be surpassed before the decade ends, as the world continues to rely heavily on fossil fuels.
However, experts underscore that every fraction of a degree of warming avoided is critically important to mitigate the dangers. Should temperatures exceed 1.5°C, humanity would likely need to deploy unproven carbon removal technologies on a massive scale, which are not currently operational.
‘Limited picture’
The two-week COP30 climate negotiations in the Amazon, which start on November 10, are tasked with galvanising momentum in the face of a hostile United States, geopolitical tensions, economic concerns, and fears that the most ambitious climate targets are already slipping out of reach.
The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels — and 1.5°C if possible. But they stress that each fraction of a degree of temperature increase avoided is crucial to limit the danger.
A significant challenge in the UN’s assessment stems from the lack of timely submissions. Only 64 of nearly 200 nations party to the Paris Agreement provided their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – increasingly ambitious five-year climate plans – by the September deadline. This resulted in what Stiell described as “quite a limited picture,” compelling the UN to attempt a more general calculation.
“This wider picture, though still incomplete, shows global emissions falling by around 10 percent by 2035,” he said. This broader estimate included the United States’ submission, which predates former President Donald Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Paris Agreement for a second time, his public dismissal of climate change as a “hoax,” and his administration’s efforts to restrict scientific climate research.
China, the world’s largest emitter, also contributed to the estimate with its pledge to cut emissions by 7-10% by 2035 – marking its first ever absolute national target. Similarly, the European Union’s “statement of intent” to achieve a 66.25% to 72.5% reduction in emissions by 2035 compared to 1990 levels was factored in, despite internal disagreements within the 27-nation bloc regarding its climate ambitions.
“We are still in the race,” Stiell affirmed, “but to ensure a livable planet for all eight billion people today, we must urgently pick up the pace, at COP30 and every year thereafter.”