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A flurry of emissions pledges around the COP26 climate summit will likely do little to slow global warming, the UN said on Tuesday, calling on nations to sharply accelerate their greenhouse gas cuts this decade.
Nations have presented a range of new and enhanced commitments — including a vow by India to be carbon neutral by 2070 — in recent weeks as the UN climate summit sets its sights on limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Countries came in to the negotiations far off target, with national emissions-cutting pledges — known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs —put Earth on course to warm a “catastrophic” 2.7 degrees Celsius this century.
And a fresh assessment of their new pledges by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) found the outcome was “very similar”, largely because the most ambitious emissions cuts are envisaged after 2030.
The report highlights the challenges facing climate negotiations, given the yawning gap between the emissions cuts needed this decade to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and the continuing increases in greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere.
UN Climate Change said last week that countries’ renewed NDCs would see emissions climb 13.7% by 2030 before sharply declining thereafter.
To keep in line with 1.5C, emissions must instead fall 45% by then.
