The head of the United Nations has conceded that the global average temperature will rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, breaching a key limit set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
In a video message commenting on a new UN report on the gap between national plans to cut emissions and what is needed to meet global climate goals, António Guterres said “scientists tell us that a temporary overshoot above 1.5 degrees is now inevitable – starting, at the latest, in the early 2030s”.
The 1.5C threshold is symbolically important, as all governments agreed in the Paris climate accord to try to limit global warming to that level. Since then, diplomats at climate talks have described the temperature goal as the world’s “North Star” and pledged to “keep 1.5 alive”.
In May, however, scientists with the World Meteorological Organization predicted there was a 70% chance that the 2025-2029 period will be more than 1.5C hotter than pre-industrial times and said only a “fortuitous intervention of natural climate variability” like a volcanic eruption could prevent the 1.5C limit being breached in the longer term.
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Guterres’ reflections on the emissions gap report are the first time the UN has formally accepted that the 1.5C limit will definitely be breached. The report finds that “the multi-decadal average of global temperature will now exceed 1.5C, very likely within the next decade.”
Rachel Cleetus, a senior policy director at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, said the report’s findings were “alarming, enraging and heart-breaking”, adding that “years of grossly insufficient action from richer nations and continued climate deception and obstruction by fossil fuel interests are directly responsible for bringing us here”.
Hopes for return to 1.5C
The UN’s rhetoric has now shifted to bringing the temperature back down below 1.5C as quickly as possible within this century. It says this can be done by reaching global net zero and then net negative emissions, whereby the world absorbs more greenhouse gas than it produces using natural sinks like forests or carbon removal technologies.
Guterres said breaching the 1.5C limit was “no reason to surrender. It’s a reason to step up and speed up. 1.5C by the end of the century remains our North Star. And the science is clear: this goal is still within reach. But only if we meaningfully increase our ambition.”
The head of the UN’s climate arm, Simon Stiell, said last week that “temperatures absolutely can and must be brought back down to 1.5C as quickly as possible after any temporary overshoot, by substantially stepping up the pace on all fronts.”
Last year’s Emissions Gap Report measured the “likelihood of warming exceeding a specific temperature limit”. This year’s report changed this to the “likelihood of limiting warming below a specific temperature limit over the 21st century”.
The report found that even in the most ambitious scenario – where governments’ NDC climate plans and net-zero pledges are achieved in full – there is only a one-in-five chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C in this century.
If governments continue with their current policies rather than strengthening them to meet their climate targets, the likelihood of limiting global warming to 1.5C this century drops to 0% and to 2C to just 8%. The report noted that for the G20 group of big economies, implementation of policies to meet net zero targets “remains generally weak”.
Net-negative emissions goals
While most governments have targets to reach net zero, few have net negative goals. Finland plans to reach net netagive by 2040, Sweden by 2045, Denmark aims for a 110% cut in emissions by 2050 while Germany aims to reach net negative by 2060.
The German government argues that net-negative emissions will be necessary in some countries to balance out others’ continued emissions and to cancel out greenhouse gas emissions that can’t be avoided, like methane from farming.
Denmark is investing in direct air capture machines to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and in paying fossil fuel companies to store the gas under the seabed, where it does not contribute to climate change.
Some heavily-forested countries like Guyana claim to be net negative already, although Guyana’s argument rests on forestry accounting methods criticised by some scientists.
The Emissions Gap Report’s authors said that the faster net zero is reached, the cheaper it will be to get the temperature back down to 1.5C. “Each year of inaction makes the path to net zero by 2050 and net-negative emissions thereafter steeper, more expensive and more disruptive,” they warned.
The post UN accepts overshooting 1.5C warming limit – at least temporarily – is “inevitable” appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN accepts overshooting 1.5C warming limit – at least temporarily – is “inevitable”
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
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None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.