Aathira Perinchery 
New Delhi: As global temperatures rise, climate change has most of the world in turmoil with extreme weather events including intense rains, droughts, wildfires and more. And the bad news doesn’t seem to end.
As per this year’s United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report released on October 24, the current Nationally Determined Contributions – pledges by nations that aim to tackle climate change through actions such as increasing renewable energy sources to cut greenhouse gas emissions – are just not going to do the job of limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, as agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
In fact, the existing NDCs mean that the world could well witness a global temperature rise of 2.6-2.8°C this century, the UNEP report said.
Science shows that at such temperatures, entire ecosystems could collapse. For instance, a study in 2022 showed that if the world hits 2°C above pre-industrial levels, all remaining refuges for the world’s already-ailing coral reefs will no longer exist. Coral reefs are critical for the survival of several fish species, many that people – especially local communities – rely on for both sustenance and livelihoods.
Cattle owned by a Rajasthan pastoralist community which is forced to move from place to place in search of water. Photo: ICARDA/Flickr (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic)
Countries are not implementing their pledges
The Emissions Gap Report 2024, released by the UNEP on October 24, titled ‘No more hot air…please!’, focuses on the Nationally Determined Contributions of nations in context of the upcoming 29th Conference of Parties (COP), the UN’s largest climate conference where leaders and government representatives will convene to take decisions on ways to tackle climate change. The 11-day-long COP29 will kick off on November 11 at Baku, Azerbaijan. Countries’ pledges or targets to cut down emissions are officially listed as their Nationally Determined Contributions, and are part of their ratification of the Paris Agreement. Targets can be unconditional or conditional: the latter are implemented by countries only if they receive financial support from other countries or international agencies. Nations have to submit the next set of updated NDCs early next year, and before COP30, which will be conducted in Brazil.
UNEP’s Emissions Gap Reports – produced annually since 2011 – assess “the gap between countries’ pledges on greenhouse gas emissions reductions and the reductions required to deliver a global temperature increase of below 2°C by the end of this century”. The 2023 Emissions Gap report found that countries’ pledges as of November 2023 – just before the UN’s 28th Conference of Parties at Dubai, UAE – would put the world on track for a 2.5-2.9°C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels this century, far higher than the limit of restricting global warming to a 1.5 or 2°C temperature rise.
The 2024 report paints an even darker picture: the estimated temperature rise has now increased. Given existing pledges’, and countries’ failure to implement them immediately, the world will witness a temperature increase of 2.6-3.1°C over the course of this century.
The global temperature rise will be 2.6°C if nations are able to fully implement all current unconditional and conditional NDCs. Implementing just some of these NDCs could result in higher temperature rises. For instance, implementing only existing unconditional NDCs would lead to 2.8°C of warming; and current levels of (low) implementation could lead to a drastic 3.1°C of warming.
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Per the report, global greenhouse gas emissions amounted to 57.1 gigatonnes worth of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) in 2023, a 1.3% increase from 2022 levels. The power sector was the largest global contributor to emissions at 15.1 GtCO2e, followed by transport (8.4 GtCO2e), agriculture (6.5 GtCO2e) and industry (6.5 GtCO2e).
To limit warming to less than 2°C, global emissions have to fall by 28% by 2030 and 37% from 2019 levels by 2035.
“The emissions gap is not an abstract notion,” said António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, in a video message on the report, per a press release. “There is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters. Around the world, people are paying a terrible price. Record emissions mean record sea temperatures supercharging monster hurricanes; record heat is turning forests into tinder boxes and cities into saunas; record rains are resulting in biblical floods.”
Representative image of buildings submerged due to floods in West Bengal. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar/The Wire
“Today’s Emissions Gap report is clear: we’re playing with fire; but there can be no more playing for time,” Guterres added. “We’re out of time. Closing the emissions gap means closing the ambition gap, the implementation gap, and the finance gap. Starting at COP29.”
Role of G20 countries in reducing global emissions
In 2023, emissions from G20 countries increased, and accounted for 77% of global emissions. The report, therefore, explicitly says that G20 countries – and India is one of them – play a huge role in closing the emissions gap.
Just deploying more solar photovoltaic and wind energy, two “proven and cost-competitive options” per the report, can reduce total emissions by 27% in 2030 and 38% in 2035. Similarly, reducing deforestation, increasing reforestation and implementing improved forest management are “readily available low-cost options with large emission reduction potentials” that can help reduce emissions by 19% and 20% in 2030 and 2035, respectively.
“Other important and readily available mitigation options include demand-side measures, efficiency measures, and electrification and fuel switching in the buildings, transport and industry sectors,” the UNEP report said.
India emitted 4,140 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2023, accounting for 8% of the world’s total emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from China, on the other hand, accounted for 30% of the world’s emissions, at 16,000 MtCO2e. However, India’s change in total emissions from 2022 to 2023 was higher than China’s: an increase of 6.1% for India versus China’s increase of 5.2%.
According to the report, studies show that India is one of the very few countries that is likely to meet all its existing NDCs by 2030.
Put together, if countries do not collectively commit to cutting 42% of annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and 57% by 2035 and tailor-make their NDCs to enable this, the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C will be entirely out of reach, the report warned.
“Limiting warming to 1.5°C is one of the greatest asks of the modern era,” Inger Andersen, UNEP executive director, said in a press release.
“We may not make it. But the only certain path to failure is not trying. And we must remember that 1.5°C is not an on-off switch that will plunge the world into an era of darkness and chaos. We are operating on a sliding scale of disruption. If 1.5 is missed, we aim for 1.6. If 1.6 is missed, we aim for 1.7. Every fraction of a degree counts in terms of lives saved, economies protected, damages avoided, biodiversity conserved and the ability to rapidly bring down any temperature overshoot.”
Andersen also called on nations to ‘use COP29’ to bring about immediate, actionable changes to reduce the predicted rise in global temperatures.
“So, I urge every nation, no more hot air, please,” Andersen said in a press release. “Use COP29 next month to increase action now, set the stage for dramatically stronger NDCs that target 1.5°C, and then go all-out to deliver the necessary emissions cuts by 2030, by 2035 and beyond until net-zero is achieved.”