Efforts insufficient to attain goals: UN

Even if nations meet all of their current climate commitments, submitted as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming threshold will be breached, a new UN report said on Tuesday.

- Jayashree Nandi

The report flagged that global efforts to lower emissions are insufficient to meet Paris Agreement goals but has also found that peaking of global emissions are likely to happen during this decade by 2030. The report is a wake-up call for nations ahead of the UN Climate Meeting (COP28) scheduled to be held in Dubai next month.

If the latest NDCs are implemented, emissions will increase by about 8.8% by 2030, compared to 2010 levels. This is a marginal improvement over last year's assessment, which found countries were on a path to increase emissions 10.6% by 2030, compared to 2010 levels.

That is wholly inadequate: the latest science from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut 43% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels. This is critical to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels and avoid the worst impacts of climate change, including more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves and rainfall.