The Paris Agreement’s official oversight body is set to decide this month how to deal with over 60 countries that have still not submitted updated national climate plans, over a year after the deadline.
Composed of 12 experts from different regions of the world, the little-known Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) is tasked with ensuring that nations respect their obligations under the landmark 2015 climate accord.
The Paris Agreement requires each signatory government to submit climate plans known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), setting out how they will help limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Governments also agreed in Paris that NDCs should be updated every five years and submitted 9–12 months before the next UN climate summit. For COP30, that deadline was 10 February 2025. But, over a year after that deadline, sixty-two countries have not yet produced an updated NDC including significant emitters like India, Vietnam, Argentina and Egypt.
PAICC cannot punish countries, but it can publicly reprimand them for their failure to file new NDCs and other transparency reports and ask them to explain themselves.
Concern over lack of responses
After the overwhelming majority of nations missed the February 2025 deadline to submit their NDCs, PAICC opened over 170 separate cases to engage with governments on why they had not yet issued a climate plan and what steps they were taking to address the delay. Cases are closed once countries submit their NDCs.
While the majority of countries responded to the panel’s enquiries, the PAICC’s annual report said that over 45 nations had failed to provide any information by October 2025. This raised the committee’s concern.
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A PAICC member who did not wish to be named told Climate Home News that, while efforts to maintain an open dialogue will continue, the committee will now also discuss how to proceed further with countries that remain out of step with their commitments under the Paris Agreement. The committee will hold a meeting in the German city of Bonn, home to the UN climate change body, between 24-27 March.
“This is a new era, so every step we take we do it for the first time,” they said, adding that the actions the committee will take may vary from country to country, taking into account their individual circumstances.
Deciding next steps
Governments defined the committee’s mandate at COP24 in Katowice, Poland, in 2018 and produced a list of “appropriate measures” it can take to promote compliance with the Paris Agreement. Those include helping countries access technical help or finance, recommending the development of an action plan or “issuing findings of fact” when a country fails to submit an NDC.
The PAICC member said the committee still needs to determine exactly what the last option means in practice, but it will likely take the form of a public statement identifying countries that have failed to comply. The panel could potentially take other actions beyond those listed in its mandate as long as they are not punitive or adversarial.
“The legal obligations [of the Paris Agreement] are few and far between, so it is even more important to keep tabs on whether countries respect them,” the PAICC member added.
Andreas Sieber, head of political strategy at campaigning group 350.org, said national climate plans are “the currency of the Paris Agreement and how the world tracks progress and how countries plan their transitions”.
“Countries, especially the largest emitters, must honour their obligations under the Paris Agreement and submit credible NDCs,” he told Climate Home News, adding that the same applies to wealthy nations that have pledged climate finance.
Many reasons for delays
Many of the governments that have not yet submitted NDCs are low-emitting small or poorer nations, especially in Africa. But major economies that have not issued an updated climate plan – some of which also have energy transition deals with donors – include Egypt, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Countries without a new NDC contribute to 22% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to data compiled by ClimateWatch.
In their discussions with PAICC over the past year, countries have cited a range of reasons for the delays, including financial constraints, technical challenges, limited data, changes in government, political instability and armed conflicts, according to the committee’s annual report.
India is the largest emitter without an NDC. At COP30 last November, the Indian government said that it would submit its climate plan “on time”, with environment minister Bhupender Yadav telling reporters it would be delivered “by December”. But that self-imposed deadline was not met.
The right-wing government of Argentina, which has considered leaving the Paris Agreement, unveiled caps on the country’s emissions for 2030 and 2035 in an online event on November 3, but has yet to formalise those targets in an NDC.
Undersecretary of the Environment Fernando Brom told Climate Home News that the country would present its NDC during the first week of COP30. That did not happen, although Argentinian negotiators participated in the climate summit.
Some local experts have pointed to the trade deal signed with the US in November as one of the reasons for the delay in submitting the NDC, while others cited the government’s disinterest in the climate agenda.
In January, the Vietnamese government said it was still working on the draft of its NDC, while the Philippines’ government has organised consultation events on its new NDC but has not indicated when it would be released.
The post Paris Agreement watchdog weighs action against countries missing climate plan appeared first on Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement watchdog weighs action against countries missing climate plan
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Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Countries attending a first-of-its-kind fossil-fuel summit have been asked to consider “action recommendations” such as “halting all new fossil-fuel expansion” and “reject[ing] gas as a bridging fuel”, according to a preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief.
Around 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia from 24-29 April to debate ways to “transition away” from fossil fuels, in the face of worsening climate change and sky-high oil prices.
The talks come after a large group of nations campaigned for, but ultimately failed, to get all countries to formally agree to a “roadmap” away from fossil fuels at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November.
The nations gathering in Santa Marta for the summit co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, call themselves the “coalition of the willing”.
Ahead of country officials arriving in Santa Marta, a global group of academics will gather in the city this week to present and discuss the latest scientific evidence on fossil-fuel phaseout, which will then inform debate among policymakers.
A preliminary scientific “synthesis report” circulated to governments attending the talks and seen by Carbon Brief offers 12 “action insights” for countries to consider, along with a wide range of “action recommendations”.
These recommendations range from “phase out subsidies on fossil-fuel production and consumption” to “kick-start a forum to develop a legal framework to ban fossil-fuel advertisements”.
‘Rapid’ assessment
The preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief – titled, “Action insights for the Santa Marta process” – is the result of some rapid work by an “ad-hoc” group of around 24 scientists.
It is designed to present governments attending the talks with concrete and actionable recommendations for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The preliminary version, which includes recommendations such as “halting all new fossil fuel expansion”, has already been circulated to governments, with a view that this could help them to prepare for the talks in advance.
It will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the academic segment of the Santa Marta talks, before a final version is made public towards the end of April, Carbon Brief understands.
The process to produce the report began shortly after the conclusion of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November, explains its lead author, Dr Friedrich Bohn, a research scientist and co-founder of the Earth Resilience Institute in Germany. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When [Brazil] announced there would be a Santa Marta conference led by Colombia and the Netherlands, I was sitting listening with a small group of scientists. We thought: ‘This is great news, but it should be supported by scientific expertise.’”
One of the members of Bohn’s group had a pre-existing relationship with the Colombian government, allowing a dialogue to quickly be established, he continues:
“In the beginning, the idea was to just write a peer-reviewed paper. But, because of this close connection to the Colombian government and some feedback from them, the synthesis paper evolved.”
The report came out of a “very rapidly evolved process” that relied on the “goodwill” and “enthusiasm” of the academics involved, adds coordinating author Prof Frank Jotzo, a professor of climate change economics at Australian National University. (Jotzo is a former Carbon Brief contributing editor.) He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s an attempt to get broad coverage on relevant topics from researchers with good expertise and reputation.”
The group of 24 scientists involved spent around two months compiling the “action insights” for the report, drawing on their expertise and the latest available research, says Jotzo.
Given the rapid nature of the report, it does not aim to be “completist”, has not been externally reviewed and did not follow a stringent process for author selection comparable to that used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, he adds.
The contributors to the report currently skew to the global north and include more men than women, adds Bohn.
‘Direct guidance’
In a departure from IPCC reports, the preliminary Santa Marta synthesis report offers “very direct guidance to action”, says Jotzo.
The report lists 12 “action insights”, each with three “action recommendations”. (The list was cut down from a shortlist of about 40-50 insights, Carbon Brief understands.)
One of the most striking in the draft is “action insight 5”, which says:
“Take immediate measures to prevent future emissions. Ban new fossil infrastructure, mandate deep methane cuts, accelerate electrification and inscribe fossil-fuel phase-down targets in NDCs [nationally determined contributions] and clean-energy pathways support to low and middle income countries (LMICs).”
The accompanying three “action recommendations” include “halting all new fossil-fuel extraction and infrastructure projects ahead of a final investment decision”, “implementing deep, legally binding methane cuts in the energy sector” and “inscrib[ing] targets for fossil-fuel phase down, electrification and green exports in NDCs”.
(The draft report includes multiple references to “phasing out” and “phasing down” fossil fuels, rather than the “transition away from fossil fuels” language that was, ultimately, agreed by countries at the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai in 2023.)
Another action insight says “public support for climate action is broadly underestimated and undermined by interest groups, but it can be strengthened by debunking greenwashing narratives”.
One recommendation for this insight is that nations “reject natural gas as a bridging technology and CCS [carbon capture and storage] techniques as scalable compensation”.
In a letter introducing the report to governments and civil society, the scientists note that making direct recommendations is a “challenge for our community”, but added:
“However, in the spirit of a constructive collaboration between science and policymaking, we allowed ourselves to identify some potential courses of action that our community would recommend for each particular issue – and we invite you to weigh these against your own circumstances and pick up whatever seems most useful for you and your colleagues.”
The prescriptiveness of the recommendations – something strictly prohibited in IPCC reports – was an explicit request from the Colombian government, Bohn says:
“The idea of actionable recommendations was introduced by the Colombian government.
“There was some discussion within the team about this. It’s a tricky area when you leave science and move to consultation. Therefore, we agreed, in the end, to call them ‘actionable recommendations’ and to make them as precise as possible, from the scientific perspective.”
Jotzo, a veteran of the IPCC process, tells Carbon Brief that it was “very liberating” to work on a report with a “free-form process”:
“The bulk of policy-related research is very readily deployed to recommendations pointing out what countries could do. The IPCC process, for example, just doesn’t allow that. As far as the summary for policymakers in the IPCC is concerned, it will usually be governments that filter out anything that could be interpreted as a specific recommendation.”
He adds that the hope is that some of the action insights might be reflected in the high-level segment of the Santa Marta conference:
“No one is under any illusions that governments will walk away from the Santa Marta conference and will have made a decision to implement recommendations one, seven and nine – or something like that. But it is a chance to insert directly applicable action points into national and plurilateral policy agendas.”
Colombia calling
The preliminary report will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the “pre-academic segment” of the Santa Marta talks.
This is taking place from 24-26 April, ahead of the “high-level segment” involving ministers and other policymakers from 28-29 April.
The pre-academic segment will also separately see the launch of a new advisory panel on fossil-fuel transition and a scientifically led roadmap for how Colombia can transition away from fossil fuels, Carbon Brief understands.
The high-level segment is expected to be attended by representatives from around 50 countries, including COP31 host Turkey and major oil-and-gas producers such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Norway.
Countries expected to attend account for one-third of global fossil-fuel demand and one-fifth of global production, according to the Colombian government.
At the end of the conference, countries are due to release a report featuring a “menu of solutions” for transitioning away from fossil fuels, according to Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez Torres.
This report is in turn set to inform a global “roadmap” on transitioning away from fossil fuels being developed by the Brazilian COP30 presidency, which is due to be presented at COP31 in Turkey this November.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency offered to bring forward a “voluntary” fossil-fuel transition “roadmap” outside of the official COP process, after countries failed to formally agree to one during negotiations in Belém.
The post Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
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