UN Warns World Will Exceed 1.5C Climate Goal By Next Decade

The United Nations on Tuesday said the world has failed to meet its climate change target of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius and will likely exceed this threshold in the next decade.

According to the annual Emissions Gap report by the United Nations’ Environment Programme (UNEP), the countries’ slow action to reduce planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions will lead to to the world exceeding the core target of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“This will be difficult to reverse – requiring faster and bigger additional reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to minimise overshoot,” UNEP said.

Reuters quoted lead report author Anne Olhoff as saying that deep emissions cuts now could delay when the overshoot happens, “but we

can no longer totally avoid it”.

The 2015 Paris Agreement allows countries to limit the global average temperature rise to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for 1.5°C.

However, the UNEP stated, the governments’ latest pledges to cut emissions in future, if met, would see the world face 2.3-2.5°C of warming, which is around 0.3°C less warming than the UN’s projection a year ago, Reuters reported.

Recently, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres had warned that humanity has failed to limit global heating to 1.5C.

The Guardian quoted Guterres as saying that it is now “inevitable” that humanity will overshoot the target in the Paris climate agreement, with “devastating consequences” for the world.

He urged the leaders to realise that the longer it takes to cut emissions the greater the danger of passing catastrophic “tipping points” in the Amazon, the Arctic and the oceans.

“Let’s recognise our failure,” he told the Guardian and Amazon-based news organisation Sumaúma. “The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years. And that going above 1.5C has devastating consequences. Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon, be it in Greenland, or western Antarctica or the coral reefs.”

According to The Guardian, fewer than a third of the world’s nations (62 out of 197) have sent in their climate action plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris agreement. While the Donald Trump-led administration has abandoned the process, Europe has vowed but so far failed to deliver.

Meanwhile, China, which is the world’s biggest emitter, has been accused of undercommitting. “From those [NDCs] received until now, there is an expectation of a reduction of emissions of 10%. We would need 60% [to stay within 1.5C]. So overshooting is now inevitable,” Guterres said.