Earth Today | Sharp emissions cuts needed to bring global warming back below 1.5°C

YEARS OF inadequate climate action have put the world on an unavoidable path to exceeding global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, but whether that becomes the new normal depends on the choices governments, businesses, and societies make now.

This is the reminder from the latest Emissions Gap Report of the United Nations Environment Programme.

“Exceedance does not mark a single uniform state of risk. Every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius raises the risk of irreversible changes, including in ice sheets, permafrost carbon, ocean circulation and coral systems, along with devastating human impacts,” the report noted.

“The task now, therefore, is not only to ensure that global warming stays well below two degrees Celsius but to minimise the duration and magnitude of overshoot and establish a credible return path to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century,” it added.

What is required, it said, is “faster, deeper, and sustained emissions reductions starting immediately, as well as large-scale removals of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere”.

According to the report, global emissions reached a total of 58.4 gigatons of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e) (range: ±5.5) in 2025.

“Preliminary estimates suggest this to be a slight decline of 0.1 GtCO2e from 2024 levels, but it is not possible to conclude on the overall direction of emissions in 2025 due to the high uncertainty range. Nonetheless, this diverges from a trend of growth in global emissions over the past decade of 0.8 per cent per year and of 1.7 per cent per year for the period between 1990 and 2016,” it explained.

Still, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion of oil, coal, and gas, as well as nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases emissions “continued to increase in 2025 while methane emissions remained almost the same”.

At the same time, there has been some progress on nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which reflect country plans to restrain global warming, in line with the Paris Agreement. The report revealed that up to September 1 this year, 124 parties accounting for approximately 76 per cent of global emissions had submitted new NDCs, up from 57 submissions covering 63 per cent last year.

But while the quality of NDCs is improving, their scope has not expanded substantially, according to the report, titled The Point of Return.

“More countries now use more robust target formats, such as base-year and fixed-level emissions targets, which strengthen transparency, comparability, and accountability. However, progress in setting economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions targets and extending coverage across all sectors and gases, as called for by the first global stocktake, remains limited,” it explained.

There is also the challenge of current policies that leave 2030 emissions some two to four gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent above what full NDC implementation requires and with which countries have not yet aligned policy.

The report also found that fewer than half of the G20 members – the world’s largest emitters – are on track to close their implementation gaps for 2030 while the stringency of 2035 NDC targets varies.

“Under current policies, only six G20 members (China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation, South Africa, and Türkiye) are assessed as likely to achieve their unconditional 2030 targets while the assessment of the European Union is inconclusive. Overall, this suggests limited progress in narrowing implementation gaps across the G20. Changes to the emission projections under current policies for the G20 members are limited since last year,” the report highlighted.

At the same time, among other things, the publication has revealed that climate policies “can and have reduced emissions”.

“The challenge is how fast they can be scaled. Evidence from tracking of major structural shifts in national and sectoral emissions, causal policy evaluations, and sectoral case studies shows that implemented climate policies generally deliver emission reductions,” the report said.

“However, successes remain concentrated in specific sectors, countries, and periods. Bridging the emissions gap requires economy-wide and global replication and sustaining,” it added.

pwr.gleaner@gmail.com