(www.MaritimeCyprus.com) Each year for the last decade, the UN Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report has compared where greenhouse gas emissions are headed, against where they should be to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Each year, the report finds that nations must deliver dramatically stronger ambition and action in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions or the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal will be gone within a few years. The report is the 15th edition in a series that brings together many of the world’s top climate scientists to look at future trends in greenhouse gas emissions and provide potential solutions to the challenge of global warming.
What’s new in this year’s report?
The report looks at how much nations must promise to cut off greenhouse gases, and deliver, in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), due for submission in early 2025 ahead of COP30. Cuts of 42 per cent are needed by 2030 and 57 per cent by 2035 to get on track for 1.5°C.
A failure to increase ambition in these new NDCs and start delivering immediately would put the world on course for a temperature increase of 2.6-3.1°C over the course of this century. This would bring debilitating impacts to people, planet and economies.
It remains technically possible to get on a 1.5°C pathway, with solar, wind and forests holding real promise for sweeping and fast emissions cuts. To deliver on this potential, sufficiently strong NDCs would need to be backed urgently by a whole-of-government approach, measures that maximize socioeconomic and environmental co-benefits, enhanced international collaboration that includes reform of the global financial architecture, strong private sector action and a minimum six-fold increase in mitigation investment. G20 nations, particularly the largest-emitting members, would need to do the heavy lifting.
Some parts of the world are burning. Some parts are drowning and people everywhere are struggling to cope and in many cases to survive – particularly and always the poorest and most vulnerable. Against this backdrop of tragedy and rising climate anxiety, nations are preparing new climate pledges for submission early next year.
This 2024 edition of UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report tells us that nations must show a massive increase in ambition in new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), these promises we make to each other and the world each five years. This ambition must be accompanied by rapid delivery, or the Paris Agreement target of holding global warming to 1.5°C by 2100 will be dead within a few years and the target of well below 2°C will take its place in the intensive care unit.
As things stand, current NDCs put the world on track for a global temperature rise of 2.6-2.8°C this century. Even worse, policies currently in place are insufficient to meet even these NDCs. If nothing changes, we are heading for a temperature rise of 3.1°C.
For more details click below to download full report:
Source: United Nations
