Climate pledges still ‘nowhere near’ enough for 1.5ºC — UN

PARIS — International climate pledges remain far off track to limit temperature rises to 1.5ºC, according to a UN report released on Wednesday, less than two weeks ahead of high-stakes negotiations to tackle global warming.

The combined climate pledges of more than 190 nations that signed up to the 2015 Paris climate deal put Earth on track to warm around 2.5ºC compared to pre-industrial levels by the century’s end, the UN said.

With the planet already battered by climate-enhanced heatwaves, storms and floods after just 1.2ºC of warming, experts say the world is still failing to act with sufficient urgency to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5ºC world,” said Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change.

“To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years.”

The UN’s climate experts have said emissions — compared to 2010 levels — need to fall 45 per cent by 2030 in order to meet the Paris deal’s more ambitious goal.

In this latest report, the UN said that current commitments from governments around the world will in fact increase emissions by 10.6 per cent by 2030, from 2010. This was a slight improvement from a similar analysis a year ago.

‘Disappointing’ 

When nations met in Glasgow last year for a previous round of climate negotiations, they agreed to speed up their climate pledges to cut carbon pollution this decade and increase financial flows to vulnerable developing nations.

But only 24 countries, of 193, had updated their plans at the time of the report, which Stiell said was “disappointing”.

“Government decisions and actions must reflect the level of urgency, the gravity of the threats we are facing, and the shortness of the time we have remaining to avoid the devastating consequences of runaway climate change,” he said.

He called on governments to revisit and strengthen their carbon cutting plans in line with the Paris temperature goals before the UN climate meeting, which will be held from November 6 to 18 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

Nations are meeting in the shadow of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and cascading global crises of hunger, energy prices and living costs, exacerbated by extreme weather.

Research by the World Resources Institute suggests that the world needs to curb emissions six times faster by 2030 than the current trajectory to meet the 1.5ºC warming cap.

Australia and Indonesia have offered “some momentum” by stepping up their climate pledges since the last UN climate negotiations, said WRI’s Taryn Fransen, adding that further announcements from a range of countries including the European Union, Chile, Turkey and Vietnam are expected this year.

She said the world’s second biggest emitter, the United States, took a “massive step” this year with measures in its new sweeping climate and inflation bill and urged China, the biggest emitter, to set a specific goal to cut planet-warming methane pollution.

‘Transformative response’ 

A second UN report also released Wednesday looked at longer term and “net-zero” climate goals to around mid century put forward by dozens of countries.

It found that those countries’ greenhouse gas emissions would be 68 per cent lower by 2050 than they were in 2019, if all strategies were fully implemented.

“This is a sobering moment, and we are in a race against time,” said Sameh Shoukry, Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs and President-Designate of the upcoming UN COP27 talks.

Countries need to do more, he said, adding that the “alarming findings merit a transformative response” in Egypt.

Scientists have warned that any rise above 1.5C risks the collapse of ecosystems and the triggering of irreversible shifts in the climate system.

With the impacts slamming hardest into countries least responsible for fossil fuel emissions, calls have grown louder for richer polluters to pay “loss and damage” to vulnerable nations.

In a landmark report this year on climate impacts and vulnerabilities, the UN’s 195-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that time had nearly run out to ensure a “liveable future” for all.

That report was signed off by the same governments that will return to negotiations in Egypt.