WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - With global temperature rise set to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the Paris Climate Agreement's emissions cut target will not be achievable in the next few years, says a UN climate report released on Wednesday.
The 'Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return', published by the UN Environment Program, calls on countries to 'pull out all the stops' and urgently cut emissions to minimize the overshoot and return to the internationally agreed threshold by the end of this century.
It outlines a 'lowest possible' overshoot scenario in which peak warming by roughly mid-century is limited to 1.7 to 1.8°C.
Achieving this requires slashing emissions by 18 percent by the end of the decade, 45 percent by 2035, and 69 percent five years later, compared with 2025 levels.
'Overshoot is not surrender,' UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a message accompanying the report. 'We can still keep it as small and as short as possible - and bring temperatures back below 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.'
The report argues that there are more opportunities than ever to step up action.
Since adoption of the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which set the 1.5-degree target, renewable energy has boomed, total energy supply from coal and oil has grown slower than projected and climate policies have cut emissions in many places.
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen warned about the cost of inaction.
'Every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5°C increases climate impacts and risks, such as the deadly floods, heatwaves and wildfires that have plagued many nations this year,' she said.
'So, we must pull out all the stops to minimize peak warming and return to 1.5°C by the end of the century', she added, stressing that 'this is possible.'
If current policies continue, warming could reach 2.8°C within this century and increase thereafter, the report warned.
Under the Paris Agreement, countries are required to submit national climate action plans, or NDCs, and even if all are delivered and similar efforts continue, warming will be limited to 2.6°C.
These outcomes are worse than last year's projections, the report said, due to the United States withdrawing from the climate deal and revised estimates of historical emissions.
Meanwhile, new NDCs submitted since the last emissions report have hardly made a difference.
Yet, returning to or below the 1.5 threshold can be done, particularly as evidence increasingly shows how climate policies have reduced emissions.
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