The World’s Climate Promises Barely Move the Needle
1.5°C Still Possible — But the World Is Running Late
Nairobi/New York/Geneva: A decade after the Paris Agreement, the world’s climate promises remain too weak to halt the planet’s dangerous warming trajectory. The latest Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off Target by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reveals only a marginal drop in projected global temperatures — a sobering measure of progress after ten years of pledges and missed opportunities. Even if every national commitment is fully delivered, average global temperatures are now expected to rise by 2.3 to 2.5°C this century, down only slightly from last year’s 2.6 to 2.8°C estimate. That shift offers no cause for relief. About a tenth of the apparent improvement results from technical adjustments, and another tenth will be erased by the forthcoming withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement. The real change in climate ambition is negligible.
The world has entered a critical phase. Only 60 Parties to the Paris Agreement — less than one-third of signatories, representing about 63 per cent of global emissions — submitted new or updated climate pledges for 2035 by the September deadline. At the same time, global greenhouse gas emissions continued to climb, rising 2.3 per cent in 2024 to a record 57.7 gigatons of CO₂ equivalent. If current policies continue, the planet is on course for up to 2.8°C of warming — levels scientists associate with irreversible tipping points in polar ice melt, forest dieback, and ocean circulation. Even if all pledges are met, emissions in 2035 would still be only 15 per cent below 2019 levels, far short of the 35 per cent reduction needed to limit warming to 2°C and the 55 per cent required for 1.5°C.
The report concludes that the multi-decadal average global temperature will exceed 1.5°C, at least temporarily. Avoiding this overshoot altogether is no longer possible. The challenge now is to make it as small and brief as possible, through rapid and sustained emission cuts. Global temperatures have already risen about 1.3°C above pre-industrial levels, and the threshold of 1.5°C will almost certainly be breached within the next decade. Limiting that overshoot to around 0.3°C — and returning to 1.5°C by the end of the century — would require global emissions to fall 26 per cent by 2030 and 46 per cent by 2035 relative to 2019. Every fraction of a degree avoided matters: it saves lives, reduces economic losses, and lowers reliance on untested and expensive carbon dioxide removal.
The physics are unforgiving. For each 0.1°C of overshoot, humanity would need to permanently remove and store about five years’ worth of today’s global CO₂ emissions to reverse it — an effort far beyond current technological and financial capacity. The findings highlight a fundamental truth: nations are still not delivering on promises made under the Paris Agreement. Progress since 2015 has been steady but slow, and nowhere near sufficient. Even the most optimistic reading of current pledges leaves the world far from safety. To remain aligned with the Paris goals, emissions by 2030 must fall 25 per cent below 2019 levels for a 2°C trajectory, and 40 per cent for 1.5°C. Yet, despite decades of scientific consensus, political summits, and public mobilisation, the global economy continues to emit more each year.
The result is an ever-shrinking window for action. Ten years after Paris, the world has made modest gains in technology but failed to translate them into systemic change. Amid the grim arithmetic, there are signs of transformation. For the first time, renewables surpassed coal as the world’s largest source of electricity in the first half of 2025. Solar and wind power are expanding faster than any energy source in history. Electric-vehicle adoption has accelerated, and efforts to curb short-lived climate pollutants such as methane are gaining momentum. With the right policies, this could become the new global norm. The mitigation potential in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and forest restoration remains large enough to close the 2°C gap by 2035. Cutting methane emissions alone could prevent up to 0.2°C of additional warming by mid-century.
But while technological progress surges, political will lags. Only seven G20 members have submitted new targets for 2035, and three more have announced intentions to do so. Collectively, G20 emissions — including major economies from Asia to the Americas — rose by 0.7 per cent last year. The bloc still accounts for three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, making its inaction decisive. Since the Paris Agreement’s adoption, the global temperature outlook has fallen from 3–3.5°C to roughly 2.4°C — proof that international cooperation works, but also a reminder of how far short it remains. The technologies needed to change course already exist, and costs are plummeting. Clean power is now the cheapest source of electricity in most markets and the fastest to deploy.
The obstacle is no longer technology, but trust and finance. Developing countries face crippling capital costs and receive only a fraction of global clean-energy investment, even though they are most vulnerable to climate impacts. The UNEP report estimates they will need around US$1.3 trillion annually by 2035 to meet mitigation and adaptation needs. Without reform of international finance, those investments will remain out of reach. Multilateral development banks must expand concessional lending, restructure debt, and mobilise private capital at scale. Without such measures, the transition risks deepening global inequity: clean energy for some, climate chaos for others.
The coming year’s COP30 summit in Belém, Brazil, is being cast as a turning point. Leaders are expected to finalise a new global response plan to close both the ambition gap and the implementation gap. That means faster emission cuts this decade, tripling renewable capacity, doubling energy efficiency, and phasing out new coal, oil, and gas expansion. The UNEP report makes clear that every fraction of a degree avoided matters. Reducing overshoot not only limits heatwaves, floods, and crop failures but also lowers the likelihood of crossing irreversible tipping points in ice sheets, forests, and ocean systems. It also underscores the importance of justice: the poorest nations, which contribute least to emissions, are already bearing the heaviest losses—from intensified storms and droughts to food insecurity and displacement.
Despite the grim numbers, science offers a path forward. Renewables are booming, innovation is accelerating, and global awareness has never been higher. The path to keeping 1.5°C alive is narrow, but it remains open. The world must now act on three fronts at once: peak emissions immediately, reach net zero by mid-century, and move onto net-negative trajectories by 2100 to bring temperatures back below 1.5°C. That will demand unprecedented cooperation, decisive leadership, and massive investment in the global South. The next few years will determine whether 1.5°C becomes a memory or remains a milestone. The technology exists, the economics add up, and the science is clear. What remains uncertain is whether political courage can match the scale of the crisis. The decade that began with the Paris promise is ending with an unavoidable truth: the world is off target, but not yet out of time.
– global bihari bureau
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