UN Environment Programme assessment finds world heading for a ‘serious escalation’ of climate risks and damages.
The UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off Target found that the predicted global temperature rise over the course of the century has only slightly fallen.
While the report predicts that global temperatures will now reach 2.3-2.5°C, down from 2.6-2.8°C last year, the UNEP warns that nations remain far from meeting the Paris Agreement goal to limit warming to well-below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to stay below 1.5°C.
The report finds that the multi-decadal average of global temperature rise will exceed 1.5°C, at least temporarily. The UNEP says this will be difficult to reverse and require ‘faster and bigger’ additional reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Commenting on the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “Scientists tell us that a temporary overshoot above 1.5 degrees is now inevitable – starting, at the latest, in the early 2030s. 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. 1.5 degrees by the end of the century remains our North Star. And the science is clear: this goal is still within reach. But only if we meaningfully increase our ambition.”
The UNEP assessment analyses the available new climate pledges under the Paris Agreement.
It found that only 60 Parties to the Paris Agreement, covering 63% of greenhouse gas emissions, had submitted or announced new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) containing mitigation targets for 2035 by 30 September 2025.
NDCs are plans on climate action submitted by countries as part of the Paris Agreement. The report also found that countries were not on track to meet their 2030 NDC targets.
The UNEP says full implementation of all NDCs would reduce expected global emissions in 2035 by about 15% compared with 2019 levels. However, the organisation cautions that the US’s withdrawal from the agreement will change these figures.
Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, commented: “While national climate plans have delivered some progress, it is nowhere near fast enough, which is why we still need unprecedented emissions cuts in an increasingly tight window, with an increasingly challenging geopolitical backdrop.”
The UNEP says that the size of the cuts required, and the short time left to deliver them, means that the multi-decadal average of global temperature will now exceed 1.5°C, very likely within the next decade.