‘Backsliding’: most countries to miss vital climate deadline as Cop30 nears 

The vast majority of governments are likely to miss a looming deadline to file vital plans that will determine whether or not the world has a chance of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.Despite the urgency of the crisis, the UN is relatively relaxed at the prospect of the missed date. Officials are urging countries instead to take time to work harder on their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and divest from fossil fuels.Simon Stiell, the UN’s top climate official, said in a speech in Brazil on Thursday: “Because these national plans are among the most important policy documents governments will produce this century, their quality should be the paramount consideration … Taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense, properly outlining how they will contribute to this effort [to tackle the climate crisis] and therefore what rewards they will reap.”New national plans on emissions cuts are urgently needed because current targets are dangerously inadequate. The world must cut carbon by about half this decade, relative to 1990 levels, to have a chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, the important threshold that scientists fear is already out of reach.Governments are working to blueprints set out four years ago that would result in temperature rises of 2.6C to 2.8C by the end of the century, according to the UN’s environment programme. Poor countries want to see far faster action from the G20 group of the biggest developed and emerging economies, which are responsible for about 80% of global emissions.Ilana Seid, Palau’s ambassador to the UN and the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said: “It is essential that the G20 and other large emitters exhibit their leadership with new [national plans] that show ambitions and tangible progress. We need deep, rapid and sustained reductions commensurate with the 1.5C goal. In this time of unprecedented climate crisis, more than ever we need enhanced international cooperation to truly move the dial forward.”Ali Mohamed, the chair of the African Group of Negotiators and Kenya’s special envoy for climate change, said: “It is unacceptable that this devastation [that we are seeing] is caused by the pollution of just a few countries, specifically the G20, and they must take responsibility for their actions.”Given the climate emergency – temperatures exceeded 1.5C above preindustrial levels for a whole year in 2024 for the first time – any delay to the deadline would usually be regarded as a crisis. But this year the world is facing a more immediate potential disaster in the US presidency of Donald Trump. Not only has he withdrawn the country from the Paris agreement, he has also embarked on a trade war with the imposition or threat of heavy tariffs on imports.This has thrown important trading relationships, including that with China, into disarray. The disruption to geopolitics, already in turmoil after