Emissions Gap Report 2024: No more hot air … please!

Nations must collectively commit to cutting 42 per cent off annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 57 per cent 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 the Emissions Gap Report 2024: No more hot air … please!, published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in October 2024.

Updated NDCs are to be submitted early next year ahead of the COP30 climate talks in Brazil. The report finds 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°C–3.1°C over the course of this century. This would bring debilitating impacts to people, 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. Continuing with current policies only would result in 3.1°C of warming. Under these scenarios – which all operate on a probability of over 66 per cent – temperatures would continue to rise into the next century. Adding further net-zero pledges to full implementation of unconditional and conditional NDCs could limit global warming to 1.9°C, but there is currently low confidence in the implementation of such net-zero pledges.

“Today’s Emissions Gap report is clear: we’re playing with fire; but there can be no more playing for time. We’re out of time. Closing the emissions gap means closing the ambition gap, the implementation gap and the finance gap. Starting at COP29,” said António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, in a video message on the report.

The report also looks at what it would take to get on track to limiting global warming to below 2°C. For this pathway, emissions must fall by 28 per cent by 2030 and by 37 per cent from 2019 levels by 2035 – the new milestone year to be included in the next NDCs.

(UNEP/ile)

Read more and download the report on the UNEP website