'Backsliding': most countries to miss vital climate deadline as Cop30 looms

The vast majority of the world's governments are set to miss a looming deadline to file vital new climate plans that will determine whether the world has a chance of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.

- Fiona Harvey

Despite the urgency of the climate crisis, however, the UN is relatively relaxed about the missed deadline. Officials are urging countries instead to take time to work harder on their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and switch from fossil fuels.

Simon Stiell, the UN's top climate official, said in Brazil on Thursday: "Because these national plans are among the most important policy documents governments will produce this century, their quality should be the paramount consideration; taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense."

New national plans on emissions cuts are urgently needed, because current targets are dangerously inadequate. The world must cut carbon emissions by about half this decade, relative to 1990 levels, to have a chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, the vital threshold that scientists fear is already out of reach.

Governments are working to blueprints set out four years ago that would result in rises of 2.6C to 2.8C by the end of the century, according to the UN Environment Programme. Poorer countries want to see far faster action from the G20 group of the biggest developed and emerging economies, which are responsible for about 80% of global emissions.

Ilana Seid, Palau's ambassador to the UN and the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said: "It is essential that the G20 and other large emitters exhibit their leadership with new [national plans] that show ambitions and tangible progress. We need deep, rapid and sustained reductions commensurate with the 1.5C goal."

Given the urgency - temperatures topped 1.5C above preindustrial levels for a whole year last year, for the first time - any delay to the deadline would usually be regarded as a crisis.