World will overshoot 1.5C climate goal, UN report says

The United Nations Environment Program says the world has failed to meet its main climate change target of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C and is likely to exceed that threshold within the next decade.

The annual Emissions Gap report said it is now clear that the world will at least temporarily exceed the key target of the 2015 Paris Agreement as countries move slowly to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

“This will be difficult to reverse; additional faster and larger reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will be required to minimize the overshoot,” UNEP said.

The report’s lead author, Anne Olhoff, said deep emissions cuts could now delay the exceedance from occurring, but “we can no longer avoid it completely.”

The 2015 Paris Agreement commits countries to limit the global average temperature increase to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels and target 1.5 degrees.

But UNEP said the world would face 2.3-2.5 degrees of warming if governments’ latest promises to reduce emissions in the future are met.

This represents a warming of about 0.3 degrees less than the UN predicted a year ago; This suggests that new emissions reduction plans announced this year by countries including top carbon dioxide emitter China have failed to significantly close the gap.

China pledged in September to reduce its emissions by 7 to 10 percent from peak levels by 2035.

Analysts note that the country tends to set modest goals and exceed them.

The findings add pressure to the UN’s COP30 climate summit this month, where countries will discuss how to initiate and finance faster action to curb global warming.

The Paris Agreement temperature targets were based on scientific assessments of how any increase in global warming fuels worse heat waves, droughts and wildfires.

For example, a 2°C warming would more than double the proportion of the population exposed to extreme heat compared to 1.5°C.

Warming of 1.5°C would destroy at least 70 percent of coral reefs, and 99 percent at 2°C.

UNEP said current policies that countries are currently implementing would lead to even more warming of about 2.8 degrees.

The world has made some progress.

Ten years ago, when the Paris Agreement was signed, the planet was heading for a temperature increase of about 4 degrees.

But heat-trapping CO2 emissions continue to rise as countries burn coal, oil and gas to power their economies.

UNEP said global greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 2.3 degrees in 2024, reaching 57.7 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent.

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