Nations must collectively commit to cutting 42 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 57 percent by 2035 in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – and back this up with rapid action – or the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal will be gone within a few years, according to a new UN Environment Program (UNEP) report.
Updated NDCs are to be submitted early next year ahead of the COP30 climate talks in Brazil. UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2024: No more hot air … please! find that 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, the planet, and economies.
The 2.6°C scenario is based on the full implementation of current unconditional and conditional NDCs. Implementing only current unconditional NDCs would lead to 2.8°C of warming.
“The emissions gap is not an abstract notion,” said António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, in a video message on the report. “There is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters. Around the world, people are paying a terrible price.”
