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Almost eight years after the Paris climate agreement was signed, the world isn’t on track to meet its target of limiting global warming, warned a comprehensive report issued by the U.N.’s climate body on Friday.
That leaves countries less than three months to come up with a response before the COP28 climate conference begins.
“I urge governments to carefully study the findings of the report and ultimately understand what it means for them and the ambitious action they must take next. It’s the same for businesses, communities and other key stakeholders,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary of UN Climate Change.
As the world battles droughts, fires, melting ice caps and fierce tropical storms that scientists say are a consequence of temperatures already rising by more than 1 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels thanks to over a century of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution, the report warned of a “rapidly narrowing window to raise ambition and implement existing commitments.”
Friday’s Global Stocktake Technical Synthesis Report issued by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change is the first such comprehensive assessment since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.
That deal obliged signatories to keep the rise in global temperatures “well within 2 degrees Celsius” and to aspire to limit the increase to 1.5C. The report took two years to prepare and is an exercise that will be repeated every five years.
It makes for grim reading.
“Much more is needed on all fronts,” it said. It urged leaders to raise the carbon-cutting ambition of their national climate targets — Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in U.N. parlance — and follow through on their implementation.
That’s the only way “to reduce global GHG emissions by 43 percent by 2030 and further by 60 percent by 2035 compared to 2019 levels and reach net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 globally,” the report said.
Those recommendations will be front and center when politicians and climate negotiators gather in Dubai for this year’s COP28 climate conference starting on November 30.
“Success at COP28 hinges on whether governments respond to the Global Stocktake report not with words but through bold new commitments that steer humanity from our current destructive path,” said Ani Dasgupta, head of the think tank World Resources Institute.
The task facing policymakers is enormous. The report noted that reaching targets of net-zero CO2 emissions — the goal the EU, U.K. and some other jurisdictions have set for themselves — requires a deep transformation of economies and energy systems, including ramping up clean energy production, phasing out all unabated fossil fuels and battling deforestation.
Some optimism
While the world is falling short on reining in temperature increases, the rapid uptake of electric vehicles and solar power is a positive surprise; solar grew by 10 times between 2010 and 2019, while electric vehicles soared by 100 times over that period. Assessments by the International Energy Agency point to continued rapid increases in both wind and solar deployments.
But for renewable deployment to proceed at the pace needed to help the transport and housing sectors electrify, “strengthening power grids and storage is critical,” the U.N. report added.
The fate of the planet largely rests on what to do with fossil fuels.
The report said that ending the used of “unabated fossil fuels” — meaning those where the resulting CO2 is not captured — should be carried out “responsibly” and in a socially just manner. The report admitted that such fuels “will remain an important source” for poorer countries for which an abrupt shift to cleaner energy could prove unaffordable.
Fossil fuels, it continued, are also likely to remain central in those industries that are either hard to decarbonize or considered strategic, though only “for a limited period.”
The increasing toll of climate change is shifting public support for the need for action, the report noted.
“There is increasing ambition in plans and commitments for adaptation action and support,” the stocktake said, while adding that most adaptation efforts remain “fragmented, incremental, sector-specific and unequally distributed across regions.”
To better respond to more frequent disasters, it said, climate-related risks should permeate all aspects of the political cycle, from planning to implementation.
Climate consequences
The devastation created by a warming planet is making loss and damage — the negative consequences of climate change on human societies and the natural environment — a growing source of tension in climate talks. Poorer countries more affected by droughts, storms, melting glaciers and rising sea levels want richer countries historically responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions to help financially.
That subject is certain to be a big point of contention at COP28.
Developing nations have recently demanded that a new fund meant to compensate climate-stricken nations over the irreparable losses caused by rising temperatures amount to “at least” $100 billion a year by 2030.
The report also highlighted that climate finance, an essential component of climate action, should be scaled up from several sources, primarily public capital. Still, public funds won’t be enough to bridge the gap between financing needs and current flows, it noted.
In a bid to make it easier for countries to access much-needed financial resources, the report suggested that developed countries push for more standardized approaches to public funding — a change that would cut red tape for developing nations.
The report encouraged multilateral development banks to “evolve and strengthen their roles,” by pouring more money into adaptation and resilience.
“It is essential to unlock and redeploy trillions of dollars to meet global investment needs, including by rapidly shifting financial flows globally to support a pathway towards low GHG emissions and climate-resilient development,” it said.
But despite years of exhortations and warnings about climate change, the world is still balking at making the radical financial shifts needed to rein in global warming. The report noted that investments into fossil fuels came to $892 billion in 2019-2020, with a further $450 billion in subsidies.
Money spent on climate action in the same timeframe, by contrast, came to only $803 billion.
