The world is heading for 2.8°C of warming by century’s end under current policies, according to a United Nations assessment released Tuesday that finds new climate pledges have “barely moved the needle” despite a decade of international commitments under the Paris Agreement.

The projection represents a decline from the 3.1°C forecast in last year’s assessment, but the UN Environment Programme warns that methodological updates account for 0.1°C of that improvement, while the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will erase another 0.1°C, meaning actual policy progress remains minimal.

“Nations have had three attempts to deliver promises made under the Paris Agreement, and each time they have landed off target,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP.

“While national climate plans have delivered some progress, it is nowhere near fast enough,” Andersen said. “We still need unprecedented emissions cuts in an increasingly tight window, with an increasingly challenging geopolitical backdrop.”

Even if all new climate targets submitted this year are fully implemented, they would reduce global emissions by only 12% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels, falling well short of the 55% reduction required to limit warming to 1.5°C, the Emissions Gap Report finds.

“We are far from closing the emissions gap, far from getting on track for a 1.5-degree future, far from protecting vulnerable communities from climate catastrophe,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said. “Continuing to invest in fossil fuels is a dead end. But the task before us remains immense.”

“Scientists tell us that a temporary overshoot above 1.5 degrees is now inevitable, starting at the latest in the early 2030s,” Guterres added. “And the path to a liveable future gets steeper by the day. But this is no reason to surrender. It’s a reason to step up and speed up.”

To limit overshoot to about 0.3°C and return to 1.5°C by 2100, emissions would need to fall 26% by 2030 and 46% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels, UNEP estimates, a finding Andersen said forces acceptance of a difficult reality.

“This situation means we must accept a hard truth: the multi-decadal average of global temperatures will exceed 1.5°C, very likely within the next decade. The task is to make this overshoot minimal and temporary.”

Every fraction counts 

Global greenhouse gas emissions rose 2.3% to a record 57.7 gigatons of CO2 equivalent in 2024, the largest annual increase since the 2000s. The rise occurred across all major sectors and greenhouse gas categories, UNEP said.

Land use change and deforestation proved decisive in driving the surge, with net emissions from this source jumping 21% and accounting for 53% of the overall increase. The rise was driven by extensive wildfires and land clearing, exacerbated by El Niño conditions that increased drought risk, particularly in South America.

Only 60 of 193 parties to the Paris Agreement submitted or announced new climate targets for 2035 by the Sept. 30 deadline, representing about 63% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The gap between these pledges and what is needed remains enormous.

“The emissions gap has narrowed compared with last year’s assessment, but it remains large,” said Anne Olhoff, the report’s chief scientific editor. “Every fraction of a degree matters in terms of lives lost, in terms of losses and damages, in terms of the risk of irreversible tipping points. So we really need to go as low as we can. The challenge has increased significantly because of the lack of action over the last five years.”

Meanwhile, fossil fuel production continues to expand in direct contradiction to climate pledges. The UN-backed Production Gap Report, released in September, found governments collectively plan to produce more than double the amount of coal, oil and gas in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.

The 100 largest oil and gas companies have production strategies on track to exceed their share of 1.5°C-consistent production by 189% in 2040, while private bank lending to fossil fuel activities surged 29% to $611 billion in 2024, exceeding green sector lending by 15%.

“We are not seeing anyone reducing their oil production,” Andersen said. “We are seeing step up on renewables and various other things – energy efficiency, carbon capture, forestry – but actually looking at production, is not there [in the NDCs].”

Some 73 of 87 countries reviewed in a recent Lancet report provided net explicit fossil fuel subsidies in 2023, allocating nearly $1 trillion in direct support. Including indirect subsidies, the global figure rises to over $7 trillion, according to the International Monetary Fund, more than governments spend annually on education and about two-thirds of what they spend on healthcare. Fifteen countries allocated more funds to net fossil fuel subsidies than to national health budgets in 2024, according to The Lancet. 

Olhoff noted that the report’s calculations exclude military emissions, which remain unaccounted for under UN climate agreements due to lack of reliable data.

Studies suggest the world’s armed forces generate roughly 5.5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions — more than Russia’s entire national output — yet are exempt from mandatory reporting under both the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement. Experts have called for militaries to disclose and reduce their emissions, warning that the climate impact of warfare and defence sectors is very likely growing amid a flare up in conflicts and military activity worldwide.

Despite the report’s alarming findings, officials emphasised progress since the Paris Agreement’s adoption. Global warming projections based on current policies have dropped about 1°C since 2015, and net zero pledges now cover about 70% of global emissions.

“The international community is now in a far better position to accelerate climate ambition and action than a decade ago,” said Anne Olhoff, the report’s chief scientific editor.

“When we come up with the global numbers, they do not reflect how big a task this is. It’s a monstrous task,” Olhoff said. “Assuming that we could just turn around the whole world, changing the entire way that the world works, economy works overnight, is naive.”

G20 nations fall short 

The G20 major economies, which account for 77% of global emissions excluding the African Union, collectively failed to deliver adequate climate action. UNEP found G20 emissions rose 0.7% in 2024, with the European Union the only major emitter to record a decrease, down 2.1%. India’s emissions grew 3.6%, Indonesia 4.6%, and China 0.5%.

Only seven G20 members are likely to achieve their 2030 targets with existing policies, while nine — including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and the United States — are projected to fall short, according to the report.

Nevertheless, some hopeful signals are emerging in the climate fight. One bright spot emerged in China, where updated projections show emissions peaking around 2025 — five years earlier than previously forecast — before declining through 2030. The shift reflects renewables expansion outpacing power demand as China last year surpassed the EU in cumulative historical emissions, now second only to the United States.

Late Wednesday, the European Union announced its long-awaited pledge in another glimmer of hope ahead of COP30: European environment ministers agreed to set a binding 2040 climate target of 90% emissions reductions from 1990 levels. Eighty-five per cent of those cuts will come domestically, with up to 5% achieved through international offsets.

“Today we have adopted a 90 per cent climate target for 2040 with broad support from the member states,” said Lars Aagaard, Denmark’s minister for climate, energy and utilities. “The target is rooted in science and at the same time combines our competitiveness and security. Even in challenging times, we can stand united.”

The agreement positions the EU as the only major bloc still reducing emissions and taking on deeper cuts as the world searches for climate leadership in the absence of the United States, building on the EU’s previous target of reducing emissions by 66-72,5% by 2035.

“With the adoption of EU’s NDC, we are sending a strong signal ahead of COP30 that we remain fully committed to keeping the goals of the Paris Agreement,” Aagaard said. “It enables us to push for more global climate action, when we meet the rest of the world at COP30.”

US rejects UN findings

Across the Atlantic, climate policy winds are blowing in the complete opposite direction.

The U.S. State Department inserted a formal disclaimer into the report stating the United States “does not support the Emissions Gap Report” and that “international environmental agreements must not unduly or unfairly burden the United States.”

The department notified the UN Secretary-General of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Jan. 27, with the withdrawal taking effect in late January 2026. The government informed UNEP it would not provide comments on the report.

“There was a deadline by which countries we offered the opportunity to comment should have responded. The US did not make the deadline,” Andersen explained. “Subsequently, they asked for data about the United States to be removed. That’s obviously impossible, because it’s one planet, one atmosphere and one impact.”

Andersen emphasised that “the final Emissions Gap Report has absolutely not changed or been updated based on any country engagement. We accommodated the footnote for the singular reason that the U.S. has announced they are leaving the Paris accord, but the scientific evidence and the contents of the report remain completely unchanged.”

The Biden administration had set a target to cut emissions 61% to 66% below 2005 levels by 2035, but the Trump administration has vowed to eliminate those targets.

A 2.8°C future 

Warming of 2.8°C would fundamentally transform Earth’s climate system with severe impacts across the planet.

Hundreds of millions of people — billions by some estimates — would face displacement from coastal flooding and sea level rise. Extreme heat zones like the Sahara, currently covering less than 1% of land today, could expand to nearly 20% of Earth’s surface, potentially pushing one in three people outside climate conditions humans have inhabited for millennia.

Agricultural regions depended on for food production would become increasingly unviable, causing displacement, conflict and hunger across vast swaths of currently inhabited land. Agricultural yields would decline in many regions, while extreme drought affected a record 61% of global land area in 2024, threatening food and water security.

Parts of South Asia, the Middle East and tropical regions could experience heat and humidity combinations that exceed human survivability limits. Heat exposure already claims an estimated 546,000 lives annually, according to recent research published in The Lancet. Weather-related extreme events caused $304 billion in global economic losses in 2024, a 59% increase from the 2010-14 annual average.

“1.5 degrees by the end of the century remains our North Star,” Guterres said. “And the science is clear: this goal is still within reach. But only if we meaningfully increase our ambition.”

Markets march forward 

Officials emphasised that the technologies needed for rapid emissions cuts are available and increasingly cost-competitive.

“Proven solutions already exist,” Andersen said. “From the rapid growth in cheap renewable energy to tackling methane emissions, we know what needs to be done. Now is the time for countries to go all in and invest in their future with ambitious climate action — action that delivers faster economic growth, better human health, more jobs, energy security and resilience.”

Wind and solar deployment continues to exceed expectations, with costs declining rapidly. For the first time, renewable energy sources surpassed coal as the largest source of electricity in the first half of 2025.

“The solutions needed to course correct are available at low cost, and they can deliver stronger economic growth, better human health, more jobs, energy security and resilience,” Olhoff said.

Andersen added that market forces increasingly align with climate action despite political headwinds moving against the science.

“We may see a slower uptake in some markets, in the US on the renewable side, but in other places, we will see it just accelerate as much as it has done,” Andersen said. “The renewable pricing has just completely dropped and made it very, very competitive, and actually out-competes [fossil fuels]. And of course, the jobs lie there — both in the immediate production of renewables but also in the downstream and upstream supply chains to these technologies.”

“Many investors globally, many shareholders globally, and many workers who work for these companies globally, this is what they want, and this is also what the consumer wants,” she added. “I think we will see the markets continue to march forward.”

Image Credits: Matt Howard/ Unslash, GPA Photo Archive/Flickr, UK DFID.