World ‘very likely’ to exceed 1.5C climate goal in next decade: UN

Global climate commitments are on track to limit global warming by as much as 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) this century, far below what is needed to tackle the climate crisis despite a raft of pledges, the United Nations has warned.

In its annual Emissions Gap Report on Tuesday, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said the world would exceed the 1.5C (2.7F) mark – an internationally agreed-upon target set under the Paris Agreement – “very likely” within the next decade.

If countries do as they have promised in their climate action plans, the planet will warm 2.3 to 2.5C (4.1 to 4.5F) by 2100, the report said. However, with the policies currently in place, Earth is expected to be 2.8C (5F) hotter in that time span.

“Nations have had three attempts to deliver promises made under the Paris Agreement, and each time they have landed off target,” said UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen.

“While national climate plans have delivered some progress, it is nowhere near fast enough, which is why we still need unprecedented emissions cuts in an increasingly tight window, with an increasingly challenging geopolitical backdrop.”

The findings come just days before world leaders are set to converge for a UN climate conference in Brazil, COP30, where the global failure so far to tackle the crisis will loom large.

Global emissions grew 2.3 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year, an increase driven by India followed by China, Russia and Indonesia, Tuesday’s report found.

But wealthy and powerful Group of 20 (G20) economies accounted for three-quarters of global emissions, and of the six largest polluters, the European Union was the only one to cut greenhouse gases last year.

Meanwhile, the United States under President Donald Trump has moved away from its climate commitments, and the country’s planned withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will be official early next year.

The Trump administration’s policies, which range from rolling back environmental regulations to hindering green energy projects, will add back a tenth of a degree of warming, UNEP said in its report.

The UN agency also said the rest of the world must cut an additional two billion tonnes a year of carbon dioxide to make up for what the report projects is growing US carbon pollution.

‘Every tenth of a degree’ matters

Scientists are in broad agreement that warming above 1.5C (2.7F) relative to pre-industrial times risks catastrophic consequences, and every effort must be made to stick as close as possible to that safer threshold.

At 1.4C (2.5F) above pre-industrial times, the Earth is already too warm for most tropical coral reefs to survive, while ice sheets and the Amazon rainforest could suffer severe and lasting changes below 2C (3.6F), with consequences for the entire planet.

“Every tenth of a degree has ramifications on communities, on ecosystems around the world,” said Adelle Thomas, vice chair of a separate UN scientific panel that calculates climate impacts.

“It is particularly important for those vulnerable communities and ecosystems that are already being impacted,” she told The Associated Press news agency.

“It matters in heatwaves. It matters in ocean heatwaves and the destruction of coral reefs. It matters long term when we think about sea level rise.”

In its report, the UN said only 60 parties to the Paris Agreement – accounting for 63 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions – had submitted or announced new mitigation targets for 2035 by an end-of-September deadline.

It urged world leaders to make “decisive, accelerated” reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions to minimise the projected overshoot of 1.5C (2.7F).

“Scientists tell us that a temporary overshoot above 1.5 degrees is now inevitable – starting, at the latest, in the early 2030s. And the path to a livable future gets steeper by the day,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement on the report.

“But this is no reason to surrender. It’s a reason to step up and speed up.[Achieving] 1.5 degrees by the end of the century remains our North Star. And the science is clear: this goal is still within reach. But only if we meaningfully increase our ambition.”