New reports ahead of COP29 show the world is turning its wheels on climate action

Three reports will be released before next month COP29 The climate conference in Azerbaijan all shows that existing national policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the historic 2015 Paris Agreement will warm the planet by almost 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. warming has accelerated in recent years.

The plans “fall far short of what is needed to prevent global warming from crippling every economy and destroying billions of lives and livelihoods in every country,” Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said on Monday in New York when the organization released the report. the last evaluation of the national plans that form the backbone of the mitigation side of global climate action.

Under the non-binding Paris Pact, 198 countries agreed to develop plans to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and renew them every five years to achieve the shared goal of limiting global warming to nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a target some scientists now say is out of reach.

With updates scheduled for early 2025, the plans that will form part of the COP29 agenda are “among the most important policy documents so far this century,” Stiell said, urging COP29 to be completed by the end of the decade to pull the emergency brake on emissions.

To achieve the goal of reducing global emissions by 40 percent by 2030, he said any national plan must include short-term targets for specific sectors such as energy, buildings, agriculture and transport, supported by substantive regulations.

Currently, all submitted national plans add up to around 51.5 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2030, which is only 2.6 percent less than in 2019, instead of the necessary 40 percent reduction.

“The last generation of NDCs set the signal for unstoppable change,” Stiell said. “New NDCs should set a clear path next year to make this happen by scaling up renewable energy, strengthening adaptation and accelerating the transition to low-carbon economies everywhere. COP29 is a pivotal moment in the global climate fight, and today’s data is a blunt reminder of why COP29 must stand and deliver.”

Atmospheric greenhouse gas levels continue to rise

Also on Monday, the World Meteorological Organization published its annual report Greenhouse gas bulletindetailing another year of increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

In fact, carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever before during human existence Ko BarrettDeputy Secretary General of the WMO and Senior Climate Advisor at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The greenhouse gas inventory shows that carbon dioxide is now 150 percent above pre-industrial levels, methane 265 percent higher and nitrous oxide 125 percent higher, while the heating effect of those combined gases has increased by more than 51 percent.

“These are more than just statistics,” she said. “Every part per million is important; every fraction of a degree increase in temperature matters in terms of the rate at which glaciers and ice retreat, the acceleration of sea level rise, the heat of the oceans and acidification. It matters in terms of the number of people who will be exposed to extreme heat each year, the extinction of species, the impact on our ecosystems and economies.”

Like other recent scientific reports, the WMO’s latest bulletin also warns of a “vicious cycle” of warming in the “near future” as the warm-up feedback causes ecosystems to become greater sources of greenhouse gases. Larger forest fires release more CO2, while warmer oceans simultaneously absorb less of the planet-warming gas.

“These climate feedbacks are critical to human society,” Barrett said, adding that the new report is intended to inform the U.N. climate talks in Baku.

The goal of the Paris Agreement may be out of reach

The United Nations Environment Program of 24 October Emission Shortfall Report highlights some of the same concerns raised in the other reports and realistically recognizes that it may not be possible to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius as targeted by the Paris Agreement.

“It’s time for a climate crisis,” says UNEP’s executive director Inger Andersen. “Some parts of the world are on fire. Some parts of the world are drowning. People all over the world are struggling to cope and, in many cases, to survive, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. Against this backdrop of tragedy and rising climate fears, new climate commitments must be made early next year.”

She said the emissions gap report shows that global annual emissions will need to fall by 7.5 percent every year until 2035 to reach global climate goals, “a figure that will grow with each year of inaction.” Preventing long-term warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius “remains technically possible for now,” she added, but only if individual countries step up, supported by new global climate finance and private sector action . “The G20, and especially its emissions-dominating members, must do the heavy lifting,” she said.

“The time of the climate crisis has arrived. Some parts of the world are on fire. Some parts of the world are drowning.”

— Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP

“Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is one of the greatest tasks of modern times,” she said. “We might not make it. But the only sure path to failure is not trying.” And 1.5 degrees of warming, she added, “is not an on-off switch that will plunge the world into an era of darkness and chaos.”

The warming is a sliding scale of disruption, she said.

“If 1.5 is missed, we aim for 1.6. If 1.6 is missed, we will aim for 1.7,” she said. “Every fraction of a degree counts in terms of lives saved, economies protected, damage avoided, biodiversity preserved and the ability to quickly reduce any temperature exceedances.”