These figures come from latest annual report of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) devoted to the “commitments” of different countries, or more precisely to the “gaps” in emissions between promises and reality (Emissions Gap Report 2024).
In the jargon international climate negotiations, we call “ nationally determined contributions » these reduction promises. By signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, the countries of the world agreed on only one thing: to submit a costed plan to reduce greenhouse gases, including specific targets in 2030 and 2050. They agreed were also committed to submitting an update of their targets five years later. The next deadline is February 2025 and several countries have already published their updates.
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It is on the basis of these promises that experts, such as those from UNEP, can extrapolate on the additional quantity of greenhouse gases that this will represent in the atmosphere over the coming decades.
However, if the nations of the planet have respected the commitment to publish their reduction plans and their updates, only a minority lives up to its own promisesand this explains the gap between 2.4 degrees of increase by 2100 – if all countries respected their promises – and 2.9 degrees – if we rely on reality at the moment.
It is in this context that the UNEP report, published on October 24, highlights that there is a “massive gap between rhetoric and reality”. The authors of the report estimate that emissions should be cut by 54% in 2030 and 72% in 2035. They also criticize the fact that some countries have such low targets that they don’t need to put in place new policies to achieve them.
And let’s remember that, well before the Paris Agreement, we were talking about a target of 2 degrees Celsius not to be exceeded: this is because the consensus of scientific experts was that beyond a certain threshold, we entered an area where climate disruptions would accelerate. We don’t know what this threshold is, but we suspect that there are several, depending on what disturbance we’re talking about — melting ice, ocean or atmospheric currents, etc. It was in Paris that a commitment was made to try not to exceed 1.5 degrees – and this threshold is in the process of being exceeded.
Reports in recent years have cautiously noted a “plateau” in greenhouse gas growth—but this was likely the pandemic effect. We see that few new policies capable of making a difference have been implemented since the latest promises updatein 2021, during the 26th United Nations climate conference (COP26). The UNEP annual report has served in recent years to fuel negotiations during these annual COPs, and its publication comes as negotiators prepare to travel to Azerbaijan for COP29, from November 11.
