Claims by wealthy nations that their new emissions reduction targets for 2035 are compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C have been questioned by experts concerned about fairness.

In Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) plans submitted to the United Nations in recent months, countries including the UK, Canada and Switzerland have argued that if every nation cut emissions as fast as they aim to, then the Paris Agreement goal of keeping warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times would be achieved.

But scientists and campaigners – as well as the Canadian government’s official climate advisers – say this view overlooks the fact that historically the people of these rich countries have done, and continue to do, more to cause climate change than those in poorer nations – and so should reduce emissions more sharply than average.

Commenting on the NDC claims of 1.5C compatibility, Imperial College London climate scientist Robin Lamboll noted that “the Paris Agreement requires wealthier countries to lead the way towards net zero much faster than the world as a whole”.

He added that reaching net zero emissions globally by 2050 “should have been enough to keep us below 1.5C if everyone started moving towards it in 2015”. “Unfortunately, global emissions have yet to clearly peak, and every year of rising emissions makes staying below 1.5C harder,” he added.

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Most developing countries do not have goals to reach net zero by 2050, citing a lack of funding to invest in the green transition, their low responsibility for climate change, and the need to develop economically. China – today the world’s biggest emitter – aims to reach net zero by 2060, for example, while India targets 2070.

Meanwhile, 2024 marked the first calendar year that global temperature rise topped 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, although scientists said that does not mean the 1.5C Paris goal has been breached because that refers to an average over at least two decades.

Fears of ‘1.5-washing’

At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023, all countries agreed that their next round of NDC climate plans, due to be issued this year before COP30, would be “aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5C, as informed by the latest science, in the light of different national circumstances”.

Just over a dozen of these NDCS have been published to date, with a mandatory section on how the government considers its plan “fair and ambitious in light of its national circumstances”.

Most developed countries so far have used this section to argue their plans are 1.5C-aligned, based on a 2018 recommendation by scientists working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the world should reach net zero by 2050 to have a good chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

The UK, New Zealand, Canada and Switzerland say in their latest NDCs that because they plan to reach net zero by 2050, their plans are therefore 1.5C-compatible.

This argument, however, is based on an assumption that every country should reduce emissions at the same rate, even though relative to the size of their populations, these countries have polluted – and still pollute – more than most other nations.

Avantika Goswami, climate lead at the India-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Climate Home that because of their “higher historical burden of greenhouse gas emissions”, developed nations should cut emissions faster than the average for all countries.

She said a flaw in the 2015 Paris climate accord is that it allows countries to determine their own targets rather than obliging developed nations to do more, as its predecessor did. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol set emissions reduction targets only for developed countries. “A loose voluntary system is likely to lead to creative interpretations by polluters,” Goswami said.

Neither the IPCC’s scientists nor governments have agreed on a methodology to determine what makes a climate plan compatible with 1.5C. Commenting on this last June, Brazilian climate negotiator Liliam Chagas said “it’s up to each [government] to decide”.

The Net-Zero Advisory Body (NZAB), which advises the Canadian government, says in advice included in an annex to Canada’s NDC that Canada is likely to have already used up its 1.5C-compatible carbon budget by the end of 2024 and will burn through its 2C-compatible budget by 2030.

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To do its fair share of limiting global warming to 1.5C, the NZAB says Canada should be carbon-negative – absorbing more greenhouse gas from the atmosphere than it emits – around now. Instead, Canada only aims to reach net zero by 2050.

As a result, the NZAB argues it’s not possible for the Canadian government to use a “science-driven budget approach” for setting emissions reduction targets for the future without assuming “substantial negative emissions or international transfers”.

“Less stringent and hence more realistic and achievable interim targets embed a structural injustice in that they imply Canada is claiming a disproportionate share of the remaining global carbon budget” if the world is to stay below the warming limits in the Paris Agreement, the advice says.

Canada should pay for additional emissions reductions abroad to address this unfairness, it recommends. The Canadian government itself echoed this position in its NDC, saying that climate finance is “essential for Canada to contribute to emission reductions beyond its borders”.

Differentiated responsibilities

Many developing countries do not have a target to reach net zero by 2050. The NDCs of those like Zimbabwe, Zambia and the Maldives stress their disproportionately small contribution to climate change and their vulnerability to its effects.

Zambia’s latest NDC says the plan was developed taking into account the UN climate regime’s agreed principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (CBDR) and, in a nod to carbon budgets, “equitable access to atmospheric space”.

The concept of CBDR is broadly understood to mean that, while all countries should tackle climate change, countries that have put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and have greater financial and technical resources should take on a larger share of the action required to tackle climate change.

Despite being a developing country, this year’s COP30 host Brazil aims to reach net zero by 2050. Its recent NDC says that developing countries should try to get to net zero “as close as possible to 2050 while developed countries should move faster – by 2045”.

To back up this 2045 call for richer nations, the Brazilian NDC cites the International Energy Agency and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Germany is currently the only major nation with a net zero target for 2045.

In 2023, Guterres called for a “quantum leap in global action”, with governments “immediately hitting the fast-forward button on their net zero deadlines to get to global net zero by 2050”. To achieve this, he said developed countries should reach net zero “as close as possible to 2040” – but none have responded to his plea.

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Rich nations ignore polluting past to claim climate plans are 1.5C-compatible