The head of the UN climate change body has urged countries to submit new “first-rate” climate targets by September, after only a handful of countries published new plans to cut emissions ahead of a February deadline. Under the Paris Agreement, adopted nearly a decade ago, countries are expected to submit targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, and set out how they will reach them, by a – largely symbolic – deadline of February 10.
But only a handful of countries have submitted those plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), to the UN so far.
They include the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Switzerland, the UK, New Zealand and the US, whose plan President Donald Trump is expected to abandon after he announced he would pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, again.
China, the European Union and India are among the big climate polluters that aren’t expected to present their plans until later this year.
In a speech on Thursday in Brazil, which is hosting the COP30 climate summit in November, Simon Stiell, the executive director of UN Climate Change, described the plans as “among the most important policy documents governments will produce this century” and argued “their quality should be the paramount consideration”.
“So taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense,” he said.
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Stiell said countries need to submit their NDC climate targets by September so they can be included in a UN assessment of planned emissions reductions, which will inform the COP30 conference.
Referring to the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement, Stiell said “geopolitical headwinds are not in our favour” but added that investments in the clean energy transition are a way to see the glass as “half-full”.
Speaking at the same event in host city of Belém, COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago said that the engagement of actors outside of the UN process such as businesses, cities or states “has become more important than ever because of important countries now leaving the process”.
COP30 will be an opportunity for countries to take stock of their collective ambition and assess how far the world remains from achieving the Paris goals of limiting temperature rise to “well below 2C” and ideally no higher than 1.5C.
More than 170 countries have told the UN they intend to submit new plans this year, according to a UN official.
But Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga, of the Climate Action Tracker, an independent monitor of government action, said she was “disappointed” by the small number of plans submitted ahead of the February deadline. “We hope this marks a turning point,” she said.
Copycat Paris exits?
US disengagement has dealt a fresh blow to climate action around the world. Argentina is mulling a Paris accord exit. In Indonesia, meanwhile, the environment ministry insisted participation in the Paris de
